Thu, 2. 4. 2020, 7.00 p.m.

A6 VERDI’S REQUIEM - alternative date in negotiations

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  | 

This Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic April concert presents Giuseppe Verdi's monumental Requiem. Verdi dedicated this compelling work - in its final form a funeral mass - to two leading Italian cultural figures: the composer Gioachino Rossini and the poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni. The work, conducted by Verdi himself at its first performance in Milan's Church of San Marco in 1874, is even today one of the best known and most dramatic works of its kind. Verdi was fully conversant with the principles of dramatic effect, something which he repeatedly put to good use in his celebrated operas in particular, and his marked propensity for the opera genre shines through in the great scope afforded to the soloists in the Requiem too. No wonder, then, that this towering work was performed a total of sixteen times by the Terezín concentration camp prisoners in the Second World War.

Verdi's Requiem is presented tonight by the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in collaboration with some of the best Czech opera singers and the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, which ranks among the top choirs in Europe. The performance is conducted by the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic's Chief Conductor Tomáš Brauner.