Friday, April 18th 2025 at 8pm maestro Zubin Mehta on the podium of the Main Hall – leading the Maggio Orchestra and Chorus– for the first symphonic event of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino's 87th Festival.

The program includes the “Messa da Requiem” for soloists, chorus and orchestra by Giuseppe Verdi.

The soloists are Roberta Mantegna, Agnieszka Rehlis, SeokJong Baek and Michele Pertusi.

The concert will be broadcast on Rai Radio 3

Florence, April 16th 2025 – After the sparkilng success with the premiere of Salome, which inaugurated the 87th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Festival’s symphonic-choral program will begin on Friday, April 18th 2025, at 8:00 p.m.

Conductor Emeritus for Life Zubin Mehta returns to the podium of the Sala Grande, leading the Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio, to conduct, on the evening of Good Friday preceding Easter, one of the most monumental compositions, and one of the most famous pages of sacred music, witten by Giuseppe Verdi, the Messa da Requiem for soloists, choir and orchestra. The maestroof the Choir of the Maggio is Lorenzo Fratini.

The soloists performing on stage are Roberta Mantegna, soprano, making her debut on the Maggio stage; Agnieszka Rehlis, mezzo-soprano, also making her debut at the Theatre; SeokJong Baek, tenor, protagonist in the inaugural Turandot of the last 86th Festival and Michele Pertusi, bass, who made his debut in the Maggio seasons in the summer of 1984, returning frequently over the years to illuminate with his voice the numerous operas in which he was among the protagonists.

Verdi's Requiem – of which Maestro Mehta is one of the most authoritative interpreters of all time, having recorded it on disc and video on several occasions with recordings that have become true points of reference for Verdi's composition – had a long gestation and was composed and revised on several occasions between 1869 and 1874. It was the death of Gioachino Rossini, which occurred in 1868, that caused deep emotion throughout the international musical world and pushed Verdi to promote, using Ricordi as an intermediary, a funeral mass in his memory. However, the project did not come to fruition and it was only after the death of Alessandro Manzoni, for whom the Verdi had always felt a deep admiration, that he took up his Mass again, which was performed for the first time on the occasion of the first anniversary of Manzoni's death, on 22 May 1874, in the Church of San Marco in Milan.

The last performance of the Requiem at the Maggio saw maestro Mehta himself as the protagonist on the podium, conducting it in the Cavea of ​​the Theater at the end of the summer of 2020. The maestro will then conduct another great Verdi masterpiece, Aida - on stage from June 19th to July 1st, 2025, directed by Damiano Michieletto - and it will once again be up to him to close the Festival's symphonic program with the concert on June 21st.

Il programma:

Giuseppe Verdi
Messa da Requiem for solists, chorus and orchestra

“…There are so many, so many Masses for the dead!! It is useless to add one more”. This was Giuseppe Verdi’s response in 1871 to the then director of the Milan Conservatory Alberto Mazzuccato, who had reserved words of praise for his work on the Mass conceived to pay homage to the memory of Gioachino Rossini. Mazzuccato had hoped that Verdi, given the failure of the original project, would decide to take up what had already been composed to make his own composition. In fact, it was Verdi himself who had promoted that worthy initiative three years earlier that involved several Italian composers of the time in the creation of a Requiem for Rossini. He had been assigned the final section, the Libera me; but the Mass never saw the light of day and, the project having foundered, Verdi took up his own score to put it back among his papers. In Libera me, however, there was a beginning of the possibility of a cyclical development - the text in fact contains expressions already present in the Introitus and the Sequentia - and so Verdi began to think about an organic expansion of that thematic material. The opportunity to conclude what he had already begun came shortly thereafter. In May 1873 Alessandro Manzoni died and Verdi immediately decided to rework the score of Libera me, developing the common sections and composing the new ones, to create the imposing sound fresco of the Requiem Mass for soloists, chorus and orchestra as a personal homage to the deceased man of letters for whom he felt boundless admiration. In Verdi's score everything revolves from the beginning around two dramatic poles: human fear in the face of the unfathomable mystery of death and the hope of salvation, which are sculpted when listened to thanks to the use of key musical elements. Just think of the violent sound ignition of the Dies Irae - which connects the various sections of the score like a red thread - in which archaic style coexists, with a cappella singing and episodes in severe counterpoint, and dramatic style of theatrical origin, evident in the solo parts of the Sequentia. In his Requiem Verdi never abandons himself to the consoling idea of ​​providence but continues to question himself on the reasons for pain and the ultimate purpose of existence. For him the only certainty is that of earthly death underlined by the dismay and fear of the last invocation entrusted to the soprano; a plea that however remains without any answer.