VERDI Concert

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

"Day of wrath, that terrible day." So begins the medieval se­quence that lies at the heart of Verdi's Requiem. Verdi's depic­tion of the Day of Judgment, and of man's terror, as well as fortitude, in the face of it, is as viscerally charged and dramati­cally poignant as any scene from the greatest of his operas. The sacred and the secular meet in this most unusual of requiems. Verdi was not a religious man. He was acutely attuned to suffering in this world but not much concerned about what might come after. The four eloquent singers - one is tempted to say "protagonists" declaim the words of the mass, but not as if preaching the word of the Lord. Rather, they depict, with sometimes harrowing explicitness, the very human reactions that they have to those words. Of all the really famous religious works of the past, the Verdi Requiem is perhaps the one most in tune with the temper of our times."

-Benjamin Zander