[Met Performance] CID:26100

Metropolitan Opera Premiere, New Production

Verdi Requiem Mass
Ninth Grand Sunday Night Concert
Metropolitan Opera House, Sun, February 17, 1901




Verdi Requiem Mass (1)
Giuseppe Verdi
Soloist
Lillian Nordica

Soloist
Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Soloist
Thomas Salignac

Soloist
Pol Plançon


Conductor
Luigi Mancinelli


Composer
Giuseppe Verdi


Ninth Grand Sunday Night Concert



Giuseppe Verdi



The performance commemorated the death of Giuseppe Verdi on 1/17/1901.
There was an intermission before the Domine Jesu for solo quartet.
The Verdi Requiem Mass received four performances this season.

Review 1:

Review in the Brooklyn Eagle

Metropolitan Opera House

On Sunday evening Verdi's "Requiem" was sung for the first time in the Opera House to an audience which crowded the standing space until the doors were fastened back and dozens of men stood in the foyer listening to the softly flowing melodies which represent the richest period of Verdi's achievement. The fact that Nordica, Schumann-Heink and Plançon were the soloists had as much to do with the size of the audience as any desire to hear the music. Salignac, an excellent tenor, completed the quartet and much of the success of the performance depended upon the beautiful singing of the solo and concerted music by these artists. The chorus, to which fall the "Dies Irae" and "Tuba Mirum" and "Sanctus," was much less smooth than the chorus of the Brooklyn Oratorio Society, which sang the work here a few years ago. The enormous size of the Metropolitan, too, militated against the effect of the more delicate music, which came out so beautifully in our Academy. But the opera chorus rises to a climax as very few amateur bodies of singers can do and in the "Rex Tremendae" the effect was magnificent. The greater part of the work is committed to the soloists. All the singers and Signor Mancinelli worked with great enthusiasm and the result was most inspiring. Nordica, who is as fine an oratorio as an opera singer, was in her glory and Schumann-Heink and Plançon sang with both feeling and elegance. The "Requiem" will be repeated next Sunday night.



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