Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem

Following the release of his critically acclaimed recording of Madama Butterfly, Music Director Antonio Pappano returned to the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in January 2009 for performances of Verdi’s spectacular Requiem with stellar soloists Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazón and René Pape. EMI Classics microphones were at hand to record the concerts. In the words of Antonio Pappano, himself born to Italian parents, “this is a Requiem written by an Italian and I think Italians’ relationship to religion is explosive, full of temperament, full of fear. …. And the spectre of being punished, of sins – it sounds like an opera I’m describing. …I love doing this piece here in Rome with an Italian chorus and an Italian orchestra, and they have an innate sense of what this music is about, how to bring it to life. They really know what the words mean. They have lived what it is to be religious or spiritual in Italy.”