Of course, those Italian composers not included on his list in the prestigious enterprise were quite unhappy, especially Stolz's lover, composer/conductor Angelo Mariani. “Only Italians, no foreign hand,” Verdi insisted. (You could also count a third: soprano Teresa Stolz, the Czech dramatic soprano who was probably Verdi's mistress, who originated the title role in Aida and subsequently starred in his Requiem.) When Rossini died in 1868, Verdi suggested a requiem mass be composed for his idol by a consortium of Italian musicians. There were two people Verdi adored without reservations: iconic opera composer Gioachino Rossini ( Barber of Seville, Cinderella, William Tell) and poet/novelist/nationalist Alessandro Manzoni.
For a superlative approximation of the earth's volcanic farewell, listen to the antique recording by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra in the pre-stereo days of 1951. It sounds muffled, even the bass drum, whose four blasts signal the end of the world. The cavernous Brown Theater is known to swallow sound (not nearly as well as the Hobby, though), but even with the orchestra raised a good ten feet or so above its usual pit position, the end of the world doesn't quite shake us as it should. Houston Grand Opera's vision is not nearly wrathful enough. Terrifying and cataclysmic, it's music the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah must have heard while fire and brimstone rained down upon them. He rends the earth, opens up graves, turns all to ash and drop-kicks the faithless into the pits of hell. As the musical version of shock and awe, the vengeful Old Testament God delivers the last judgment to all sinners. “ Dies Irae,” the “Day of Wrath” second movement in Giuseppe Verdi's monumental Requiem (1874), is supposed to knock you on your ass.
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