Programme Notes
Verdi’s Requiem Fri 25 September 2026 • 20.15 Sun 27 September 2026 • 14.15
PROGRAMME conductor Lahav Shani soprano Aleksandra Kurzak mezzosoprano Annalisa Stroppa tenor Dmytro Popov bass Georg Zeppenfeld chorus Laurens Symfonisch (Chorus Master: Wiecher Mandemaker) Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901 Messa da Requiem (1873-74) · Requiem and Kyrie · Sequens. Dies irae · Offertorium. Domine Jesu Christe · Sanctus · Agnus Dei · Lux aeterna · Libera me concert ends at around 21:45 there is no intermission Most recent performances by our orchestra: Feb 2023, Chorus of Dutch National Opera, conductor Eun Sun Kim (DNO Production) Introduction: One hour before the start of the concert, Michel Khalifa will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €7,50. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.
Cover: Photo Andy Mays (Inspired-Images, Flickr)
Giuseppe Verdi conducts his Requiem in the Teatro alla Scala, 25 May 1874. Engraving for the Illustrazione Universale after a drawing by Osvaldo Tofani.
A man of little faith He is by far the most famous Italian opera composer. Everyone hums a few notes of his well-known opera melodies from time to time. But Giuseppe Verdi also wrote a grand-scale religious work. Or is his Messa da Requiem actually an opera, just dressed up as a church service? To say Verdi is to say opera. Admittedly, the very young Giuseppe’s ambition did not extend beyond becoming an organist at the local village church – a goal he achieved at the age of nine – but once he had been introduced to the genre of opera, there was no stopping him. Musical theatre was to be his calling, and after a false start with Oberto and Un giorno del regno, he made a convincing breakthrough as an opera composer with Nabucco.
It was never performed. Why not? Verdi’s bossy behaviour caused friction amongst the group Verdi’s fame as an opera composer soon soared to unprecedented heights, but he also dabbled in religious music. Following Rossini’s death in 1868, he proposed that thirteen colleagues join forces to compose a collective requiem. The work was completed – Verdi’s contribution was
a ‘Libera me’ – but it was never performed. Why not? Verdi’s bossy behaviour within the collective caused friction amongst the group. It was not until 1988 that Helmuth Rilling dusted off the complete collaborative work, and the Mass for Rossini finally had its world premiere.
Overwhelming
Despite the failure of the collective requiem, the idea of a large-scale Mass for the Dead continued to haunt Verdi. A few years later, in 1873, the composer set to work once more, this time on his own, on a large-scale setting of the ancient Latin Requiem. Not because he had become particularly devout in his later years – his second wife, the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, described him as ‘if not an atheist, then certainly a man of little faith’. Verdi set about the work after the death of Alessandro Manzoni – the writer and humanist whom he so admired, and author of the famous novel I promessi sposi (published in English
as ‘The Betrothed’), which had made a deep impression on Verdi when he read it as a teenager – following a fall down the stairs. The author was 88, the composer 60, and so grief-stricken that he was unable to attend the funeral. To make amends, Verdi composed his Messa da Requiem, to be performed at the memorial service a year after Manzoni’s death in Milan’s Church of San Marco. The composer himself conducted the first performance, featuring 120 choristers, four soloists and a hundred instrumentalists. The turnout at San Marco was so overwhelming that not everyone could find a seat in the church. Following that official memorial service, the Requiem was therefore repeated several more times, this time at La Scala in Milan, before going on to take the whole of Europe by storm within a year, with performances in Paris, London, Vienna, Cologne and Munich.
Fear-inducing
‘Everyone’ was there in one way or another, and everyone had an opinion about the mass. Johannes Brahms – composer of Ein deutsches Requiem – remarked admiringly that ‘only a genius could have composed this music’, an opinion shared by many. But there were also voices of disapproval. ‘It’s best not to say anything about it,’ Cosima noted, quoting Richard Wagner. Far too theatrical, far too impassioned, others judged. Critic Eduard Hanslick noted in Verdi’s work an ‘incompetent handling of the fugue form’, whilst conductor Hans von Bülow called it an opera disguised as church music. The latter is sometimes taken literally. Just three years ago, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra performed Verdi’s Requiem in a production by Dutch National Opera and the Dutch National Ballet. In particular, the ‘Dies Irae’ sequence – the long, second of the seven movements that
make up the Messa da Requiem – has a powerfully dramatic and emotional impact with its ten contrasting sections. The frenzied, fear-inducing ‘Dies Irae’ motif, underpinned by quadruple-forte beats on the bass drum, and the ominously fierce blare of the brass force the listener to confront the final reckoning of the Last Judgement. Here, as in his operas, Verdi displays a wide variety of vocal combinations – solo arias, duets, trios and quartets – underpinned by a broad palette of orchestral colours. The intensity of the ‘Dies irae’ recurs repeatedly as a veritable motif of fate, until this extensive movement concludes with a pleading lament in the ‘Lacrimosa’ – based on a duet from Verdi’s opera Don Carlo – and a serene prayer, ‘Pie Jesu’, sung partly a cappella.
Cry for Help
In the ‘Offertorio’, the soloists come to the fore as a quartet, with the lovely ‘Domine Jesu’ and the tender ‘Hostias’ contrasting with the more energetic ‘Quam olim Abrahæ’. The ‘Sanctus’, in which the choir is divided into two sections to create a complex eightpart fugue, begins with a triumphant brass fanfare and culminates in the ‘Agnus Dei’, in which the soprano and mezzo-soprano sing an unaccompanied, Gregorian-style melody in octaves. The ‘Lux aeterna’ begins ominously in the solo voices, from which, remarkably, the soprano has withdrawn. She returns in the passionate final movement ‘Libera me’, a revised version of the music Verdi had previously written for the Rossini Mass. The soprano cries out and pleads: ‘Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death on that dreadful day.’ It could be a cry for help from all the soprano heroines in Verdi’s operas who, all too often, must pay for their stage careers with their lives. Joke Dame
Lahav Shani • honorary conductor Born: Tel Aviv, Israel Current position: music director Israel Philharmonic; chief conductor Münchner Philharmoniker Before: chief conductor Rotterdam Philharmonic (2018–2026) Education: piano at the Buchmann-Mehta School Tel Aviv; piano and conducting at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Hanns Eisler’ Berlin Breakthrough: 2013: First Prize Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition Bamberg Subsequently: guest appearances with the world’s foremost orchestras Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016
Photo: Marco Borggreve
Photo: Aleksandra Kurzak
Aleksandra Kurzak • soprano Born: Brzeg Dolny, Poland Education: first violin and piano lessons at the age of seven, Violin study in Wrocław, followed by singing lessons with her mother, Voice study at the conservatories of Wrocław and Hamburg Breakthrough: 2004, debut Metropolitan Opera New York Subsequently: opera at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, Salzburg Festival, Bayerische Staatsoper, Lyric Opera of Chicago Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2026
Photo: Silvia Lelli
Annalisa Stroppa • mezzosoprano Born: Brescia, Italy Education: Voice at the Luca Marenzio Conservatory of Brescia, Education Sciences at the University of Bergamo Breakthrough: 2011, Salzburg Festival Subsequently: opera at Teatro alla Scala Milaan, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Real Madrid, Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opéra Bastille Parijs, Dutch National Opera Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2026
Dmytro Popov • tenor
Photo: Simon Pauly
Photo: Regina Ehm-Klier
Born: Rubizhne, Ukraine Education: Voice at the conservatories of Kharkiv and Kyiv Awards: Honoured Artist of Ukraine (2003), laureate Plácido Domingo Operalia Competition 2007 Breakthrough: 2013, Royal Opera House Subsequently: Opera at Metropolitan Opera New York, Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, Opéra National de Paris, concert appearances with Berliner Philharmoniker, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2026
Photo: Jan Hordijk
Georg Zeppenfeld • bass
Laurens Symfonisch • chorus
Born: Attendorn, Germany Ecuation: Voice at the music academies of Detmold and Cologne Breakthrough: 2010, debut Bayreuth Festival Subsequently: opera at Wiener Staatsoper, Salzburg Festival, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper, Semperoper Dresden, Royal Opera House, Dutch National Opera Awards: Sächsische Kammersänger (2015), Semperoper Foundation Prize 2018, Österreichische Musiktheaterpreis 2022 Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2011
Founded: Rotterdam, 2013, in consultation with de Doelen and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Wiecher Mandemaker Repertoire: choral symphonic repertoire Co-operations: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (a.o. in the World Premiere of Tan Dun’s Requiem for Nature and in Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher), BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2014
Agenda Thu 1 October 2026 • 20.15 Fri 2 October 2026 • 20.15 conductor Philipp von Steinaecker violin Bomsori Kim Webern Symphonie Beethoven Violin Concerto Beethoven Symphony No. 6 ‘Pastoral’ Scapino Ballet: La Mer Thu 8 October 2026 • 20.00 Fri 9 October 2026 • 20.00 Sat 10 October 2026 • 20.00 Sun 11 October 2026 • 14.30 Nieuwe Luxor Theater Rotterdam conductor and soprano Barbara Hannigan chorus Laurens Symfonisch dance Scapino Ballet Rotterdam concept, direction, choreography Nanine Linning Debussy La mer Debussy Sirènes Kyriakides Abyssal (World premiere) Thu 15 October 2026 • 20.15 Fri 16 October 2026 • 20.15 conductor Tarmo Peltokoski piano Yuja Wang Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 Fri 30 October 2026 • 20.15 Sun 1 November 2026 • 14.15 conductor Maxim Emelyanychev piano Alexander Melnikov Prokofiev Lieutenant Kijé Suite Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 Beethoven Symphony No. 1
Musicians Honorary Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin Lahav Shani Principal Guest Conductor Tarmo Peltokoski
Rosalinde Kluck León van den Berg Olfje van der Klein Jan Navarro Jutta Demuynck Cello Emanuele Silvestri Gustaw Bafeltowski Joanna Pachucka Daniel Petrovitsch Mario Rio Eelco Beinema Carla Schrijner Pepijn Meeuws Yi-Ting Fang Killian White Paul Stavridis
Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet Romke-Jan Wijmenga Bassoon Pieter Nuytten Lola Descours Marianne Prommel
First Violin Bassoon/ Marieke Blankestijn, Contrabassoon Concert Master Elias Agsteribbe Vlad Stanculeasa, Concert Master Horn Quirine Scheffers David Fernández Alonso Saskia Otto Felipe Freitas Maria Dingjan Wendy Leliveld Marie-José Schrijner Richard Speetjens Noëmi Bodden Laurens Otto Petra Visser Pierre Buizer Double Bass Sophia Torrenga Matthew Midgley Hadewijch Hofland Trumpet Ying Lai Green Annerien Stuker Alex Elia Jonathan Focquaert Alexandra van Beveren Arjen Leendertz Adrián Martínez Marie Duquesnoy Simon Wierenga Ricardo Neto Sarah Decamps Javier Clemen Martínez Giovanni Giardinella Mario Fernández Second Violin Trombone Charlotte Potgieter Pierre Volders Flute Laurens van Vliet Alexander Verbeek Juliette Hurel Elina Staphorsius Remko de Jager Joséphine Olech Jun Yi Dou Manon Gayet Bob Bruyn Bass trombone Eefje Habraken Rommert Groenhof Flute/Piccolo Maija Reinikainen Beatriz Baião Babette van den Berg Tuba Melanie Broers Martijn van Rijswijk Oboe Tobias Staub Karel Schoofs Timpani/ Robin Veldman Jesús Pinillos Rivera Percussion Annija Kolerta Anja van der Maten Danny van de Wal Viola Oboe/Cor Anglais Ronald Ent Martijn Boom Anne Huser Ron Tijhuis Jesús Iberti Rubira Roman Spitzer Galahad Samson Clarinet Harp José Moura Nunes Julien Hervé Albane Baron Kerstin Bonk Bruno Bonansea Janine Baller Alberto Sánchez García Veronika Lénártová