Verdi & Manzoni: Two heroes, one requiem.

By PEGGY ANN BLISS

Special to The STAR

Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi first presented his “Requiem” on May 22, 1874, the first anniversary of the death of his idol, novelist and patriot Alessandro Manzoni, symbol of Italian unification. In fact, Italy’s greatest opera composer was so devastated at the departure of his country’s national hero that he was unable to go to the funeral.

The work is a monument to the memory of Italy’s unification by that country’s greatest opera composer.

Some critics have called the 90-minute work “too operatic,” but most who have heard it believe that the creator of the stirring patriotic and nationalistic choruses of “Nabucco” and “I Lombardi” was the genius behind the “Requiem,” which raises some 250 voices accompanied by an orchestra, to an entirely spiritual level.

During the unification of Italy in the late 19th century, Verdi and Manzoni were two sides of the same coin, with many of Verdi’s operas reflecting the suffering of homeless and divided peoples.

The dramatic intensity and massive vocal power of “Patria oppressa” (Oppressed Homeland) from “Macbeth” also reflects the moral exhaustion of the struggling refugees of Scotland.

Manzoni, author of the 1827 novel “I Promessi Sposi” (The Betrothed), was so distressed by the linguistic (and geo-political) division of his adored Italy when the country was bisected horizontally that he rewrote his beloved love story in the dialogue of the region of Tuscany (think Florence).

It was this brazen act which led to the unification of Italy.

So connected was the great creator of opera with this cause that the hundreds of thousands of mourners who turned out for his funeral burst spontaneously into “Va, Pensiero,” the inspiringchorus from “Nabucco.”