MESSA DI REQUIEM

Donizetti’s Requiem is on the appointment that on September 5 each year pays homage to Pavarotti’s death with a great lyric symphonic concert. After the performances of Verdi’s Requiem, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Leoncavallo’s Requiem heard last year, Modena Città del Belcanto in 2020 offers another immortal page of the sacred repertoire. According to the spirit of the initiative, the concert produced by the Teatro Luciano Pavarotti also collects the fruits of the musical heritage that the Modenese schools have handed down over the years to young singers, often accompanying them on the international stage. An example of all is the presence of Cristina Barbieri, a soprano from Modena who was a pupil of Arrigo Pola, who studied with Leone Magiera, Raina Kabaivanska and Mirella Freni and was awarded by Pavarotti as the winner of the 4th “Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition” in Philadelphia. Among the solo voices of the Requiem, in addition to the bass Luca Tittoto, we find the tenor Matteo De Sole, a pupil of Raina Kabaivanska at Vecchi-Tonelli, the mezzo-soprano Nana Dzidziguri and the bass Francesco Milanese, both students of the Mirella Freni courses.

Composed in 1835 to commemorate the death of Vincenzo Bellini, Donizetti’s Requiem was rarely performed before the 1980s. Luciano Pavarotti sang it in its first world recording, on February 22, 1979 at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona. The opera, which represents the reopening of Teatro Comunale after the 6 months lock down, was performed in in Bergamo on 28 June 2020 to commemorate the victims of the coronavirus pandemic.