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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
The Messa per Rossini of 1869
Despite its connection with Alessandro Manzoni, underscored by Verdi's official title for the work, the story of Verdi's Requiem begins with the death of Gioachino Rossini (13 November 1868) and Verdi's reaction to it: ‘A great name has disappeared from the world! His was the most widespread, the most popular reputation of our time, and it was a glory of Italy! When the other one who still lives [Manzoni] is no more, what will we have left? Our ministers, and the exploits of Lissa and Custoza.’ The subtext of Verdi's bitter remark is his general disgust with Italy's political and military leaders. Lissa and Custoza were humiliating, though not crucial, Italian defeats in the 1866 war for Venice, a war won on behalf of Italy by her ally, Prussia - another humiliation. Matters were no better on the domestic front: there were serious economic problems and the continuing problem of the South. ‘I don't read newspapers anymore’, Verdi wrote to a friend in August 1868. ‘I don't want to hear about our woes anymore. There's no hope for us, when our statesmen are vain gossips.’
But if Italy's statesmen and military men were a source of humiliation, her artists were a source of national pride; in particular, her music ‘still carries with honour the name of Italy to every part of the world’. Verdi may have been especially sensitive about this point at the time of Rossini's death.
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