Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem [Enhanced, Limited Edition]

Unspecified (Composer), Giuseppe Verdi (Composer), Antonio Pappano (Conductor), Sonia Ganassi (Performer), Orchestrea dell'Academia di Santa Cecila (Orchestra), Anja Harteros (Performer), Rolando Villazón (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Sonia Ganassi, Anja Harteros, Rolando Villazón
• Orchestra: Orchestrea dell'Academia di Santa Cecila
• Conductor: Antonio Pappano
• Composer: Unspecified, Giuseppe Verdi
• Audio CD (October 6, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Enhanced, Limited Edition
• Label: EMI Classics
• ASIN: B002HIEIVK
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,153 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #22 in Music > Imports > Opera & Vocal
  • #92 in Music > Classical > Forms & Genres > Requiems, Elegies & Tombeau

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The mighty Verdi Requiem has long been a staple of both the huge orchestra and huge opera singer. Produced from a series of live concerts in Rome, recorded in January 2009, Antonio Poppano conducts the orchestra and chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with soloists whose credentials are impressive; Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazón and René Pape.
It is the band and especially the chorus that often take this recording beyond simply good. The fugal sections of the "Libera me, Domine" are first rate. Tons of full blooded, mature voices,with beautifully turned-out diction and articulation, demonstrate a heart-felt response to the dynamics of conductor and score. Verdi used a very different brush for the Requiem. In this performance, there is no hint of the La Traviata "um-cha-cha", this is very catholic, Italianate, repent or die stuff.
The performance of Pappano's soloists are marked by truly impressive legato singing, without exception. All of them have the courage to throttle back and exhibit pure sotto voce, especially Villazón, but Anja Hartenros leaves the most indelible mark. -- Hugo Munday

Product Description

Following the release of his critically acclaimed recording of Madama Butterfly, Music Director Antonio Pappano returned to the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in January 2009 for performances and the live recording of Verdi's spectacular Requiem with stellar soloists Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazón, and René Pape. A major priority for EMI Classics, the initial limited-edition release of this new recording will be a 6-panel digipack with a 28-page booklet, at special price. Antonio Pappano on the work: "Italians' relationship to religion is explosive. It's very emotional. It's full of temperament, full of fear. This is a God-fearing country. That's what an Italian approach to the idea of being punished, the idea of a terrible death [is]. It's a very Catholic thing. It couldn't have been any other way." "To hear Italians in this great music is nearly always a special treat. It is in their blood, and their native empathy, combined with the discipline of Pappano's American and northern European training, made for a gripping occasion, a performance of enthralling beauty and visceral thrills. . . . Pappano, like Giulini, Abbado, and Muti before him, encourages extremes of dynamics from both singers and orchestra, and the Santa Cecilia forces were equal to everything their maestro asked of them." (Hugh Canning, The Times, on one of the January 2009 Requiem concerts) Pappano had a stellar cast of soloists to work with for this recording: German soprano Anja Harteros, Italian mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi, German bass René Pape, and, of course, Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón. "My interpretation is . . . influenced by who my soloists are. I have to take into consideration the colour of the voices that I have with me. Their individual personalities. Their work as a team. And because they sing so much, a lot of my work has to do with them, and with what they bring to the table in their interpretation." "A gripping occasion, a performance of enthralling beauty and visceral thrills. . . . Pappano's fire-and-brimstone personality . . . brings the best out of singers." (The Times on the Jan 2009 concert)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very fine but not really special, October 6, 2009

By 

Ralph Moore "Ralph operaphile" (Bishop's Stortford, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem (Audio CD)

If you knew no other recording of the Verdi "Requiem", this one would be more than satisfactory; indeed it is very fine indeed. The sound is spectacular, the orchestral playing superb, the choral singing by turns nuanced and powerful - really expressive - and Pappano's direction mostly unerring. One might quibble about details such as the over-emphatic staccati he applies to "ne absorbeat eas" in the "Offertorio" or a slight lack of "lift" in "quam olim Abrahae" in that same movement - indeed it is only there that I experience some minor disappointment, being used to more impetus and the kind of swagger you get from Bernstein - but by and large tempi and phrasing are admirably judged. My main reservations come with the soloists: each is undoubtedly fine but equally each is definitely surpassed elsewhere and none has a very identifiable vocal personality - Harteros and Ganassi sound very similar, for example and that is mainly because Ganassi is not a true Verdi mezzo; both voices lack the necessary lower register weight and Harteros cannot float and expand a note the way Leontyne Price or Martina Arroyo could. There is also a little edge to Harteros' soprano where more Verdian warmth is required. Pape is suitably black-browed but again, the top of his voice does not bloom and there is a dryness and lack of Italianate bite which a bass such as Siepi evinced in his several recordings. It is good to hear Villazon back in good voice and he gives a really sensitive, beautifully shaded account of his two big "arias" (shall we call them!), but he is no Bjorling or Bergonzi and there is a lack of gleam in his husky tone.

This is still a very fine account and will give much pleasure; there are almost none of the lapses in intonation so common in recordings of this wonderful music - especially in live ones, such as this - and so much here is right. It's not so much what is wrong, as what is missing that causes me to knock off a star in my rating. I can imagine other listeners being wholly satisfied with this excellent EMI recording and perhaps I am being too fussy, but as a self-confessed Verdi "Requiem" nut and a voice fancier who owns a dozen or so different recordings, I am fairly sure that there are at least half a dozen which I might prefer to listen to before this one.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gramophone is right, this is one of the best recordings!, October 14, 2009

By 

James W. Durney (Tampa Bay area) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem (Audio CD)

Gramophone rates this as one of the four best recordings of this work. Toscanini's live recording in 1951, Giulini studio recording in 1963-64 and the 1992 Gardiner recording being the others. Richard Oaborne wrote this review in the OCT 2009 issue. Based on that recommendation, I bought the CD. This is a great performance with outstanding sound quality and no miscues. Libera Me is a listening experience and worth the price of the CD by itself. A word about the beginning; the first 20 to 40 seconds build very slowly. With the sound at a medium high setting, the recording became audible at about 24 seconds. Starting with very low sound allows the music to build and fill the room. In an 84-minute performance, I did not find this to be a real problem. I forgot any perceived loss as the Requiem and Sequenza took all my listening attention.
This is a "must have" CD for Verdi fans and for any classical music lover.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I feel the fire!, November 19, 2009

By 

Classics Lover - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem (Audio CD)

This is one recording you cannot pass up. I was introduced to Antonio Pappano by a colleague of mine who played me his acclaimed recording of Butterfly earlier this year and was instantly mesmerized by his musical talents. His latest recording of Verdi's Requiem is an epic performance of enthralling beauty and visceral thrills. You can sense Pappano's intense passion for this work because it translates to the featured singers. I got shivers down my spine during the opening moment. If I get these kinds of emotions just by listening to this recording, I can only imagine how I would react if I heard this in person.