In the last week of January, 1901, Giuseppe Verdi suffered a massive stroke in the Grand Hotel in Milan, where it was his habit to reside during winter. He was 87. For several days he hovered between life and death, unable to speak. The streets outside were thronged with people waiting for news of the great composer, and the local authorities had straw laid on the roadway to dull the sound of traffic. At 10 minutes before 3 a.m. on January 27th, Verdi died.
Among those who had been at his bedside in his last days was the young librettist Arrigo Boito, who had collaborated with him on the masterpieces of his old age, Otello and Falstaff. "How brave and beautiful he was to the end," Boito wrote. "He has taken away with him an enormous quantity of light and of vital warmth. He died magnificently, like a formidable, silenced fighter."
Funeral instructions
Verdi had left strict instructions regarding his funeral: stark, simple, no music or singing. His wishes were observed; but as his body was being lowered into the crypt, someone in the vast crowd began to sing "Va pensiero" - the chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco. This opera had made Verdi's name in 1842, and "Va pensiero" - an expression of longing for freedom from foreign oppression - turned him into an icon for the Italian unification movement. Almost overnight, the chorus became an unofficial national anthem. (Indeed, it remains so to this day.) And so, the story goes, that first solitary voice in the municipal cemetery was soon joined by thousands of others in a spontaneous tribute to the man who was not only Italy's greatest operatic composer, but had come to personify his native land. A month later, Verdi's remains, together with those of his wife, who had died less than four years earlier, were moved to the Casa di Riposa, a home for ageing musicians and singers which Verdi had founded and endowed. This time, "Va Pensiero" was sung by a choir of more than 800 voices under the direction of Arturo Toscanini.
Gulf of time
Galway, 2001 is far removed from Milan, 1901. But perhaps an ethereal ripple of music travelled across that gulf of time and space last Saturday evening. In the unlikely setting of the concert hall at Leisureland, a garishly painted entertainment complex on the Salthill seafront, Our Lady's Choral Society, Dublin joined with Galway Baroque Singers and the RTE Concert Orchestra to honour Verdi on the exact centenary of his death. At the end of the evening, the conductor Proinnsias O Duinn recounted the story of the composer's funeral, more or less as I have given it above, and remarked that, with the 186 voices in the combined choirs, along with the help of the audience, the forces on hand outnumbered Toscanini's 800. This nicely cued choirs, audience and orchestra for a roof-swelling rendition of "Va Pensiero". The main event, earlier, had been a performance of Verdi's awesome Requiem, composed in 1874 in honour of the patriot and novelist Alessandro Manzoni. "If asked which is Verdi's greatest composition, one would be hard put for a reply," wrote Julian Budden, the Verdi biographer and scholar. "But to the question, which one shows his genius at its most concentrated, the answer must surely be the Requiem." The work is an intensely dramatic setting of the Latin text of the Requiem Mass, by turn sombre, supplicatory, celebratory and cataclysmic. The soloists last Saturday were soprano Franzita Whelan and contralto Bridget Knowles (both Irish); tenor Evan Bowers (American) and bass Tomas Tomasson (Icelandic).
I have not seen any review of the performance, nor am I competent to offer one; and being a participating member of Our Lady's Choral Society, I am doubly disqualified. I can only say that for us choristers it was an unforgettably stirring musical experience; and, judging from the animated faces of the audience, many of them would share that view. The direct emotional appeal of Verdi's music has made him the best-loved of all opera composers; many people, critics and amateurs alike, would say he is also simply the best. This commemorative year will be marked by countless performances of his works throughout the world, including more than 40 of the Requiem.
Here in Dublin, the work will be performed on Thursday and Friday, March 1st and 2nd, at the National Concert Hall by the RTE Philharmonic Choir and the National Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Anissimov.
Soul's journey
Meanwhile, we in Our Lady's are switching our attention to a very different, but equally monumental exploration of the afterlife: Elgar's oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, based on John Henry Newman's poem about the journey of a soul after death. When it appeared in 1900, it quickly won Elgar an international reputation, establishing him as the most significant English composer since Purcell, two centuries earlier. Our performance of the work is scheduled for the National Concert Hall on Sunday, May 13th.
Between now and then, we'll be taking to the pavements of Fishamble Street, Dublin, as usual, on April 13th, to sing extracts from Handel's Messiah beside the site of its first ever performance on that date in 1742. This year, "Messiah Day" falls, fittingly, on Good Friday.