Giuseppe Verdi's sacred choral music has all been recorded often enough, but it represents a distinctive corner of his output and makes better sense when put together.
Some of it is operatic, but some of it isn't.
The music reflects in various ways Verdi's own ambivalent-at-best attitude toward religion; it is spiritual without being conventional, and the operatic passages often bespeak a humanistic approach to the text.
Much of the music stands or falls on the choir, and here the venerable Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia excels.
Aided by the firm hand of conductor Antonio Pappano, it realizes the full dynamic range from the mysterious Ave Maria from the Four Sacred Pieces of Verdi's great old age to the thunder and lightning of the Libera Me (1869).
The latter work was part of a Messa per Rossini, a collaborative requiem mass on the occasion of Rossini's death, suggested by Verdi and executed by him and a dozen other composers, all of them entirely forgotten.
Verdi's Libera Me was reworked for his own Requiem five years later, and it's interesting both as a first draft and simply as a compact piece of great Verdi that ought to be performed more often.
Soprano Maria Agresta lacks a sufficiently dramatic quality, but she's there on all the quiet high notes, and really there's very little to cavil about on this fine recording, whose engineering matches its artistic ambitions.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ave MariaGiuseppe Verdi | Antonio Pappano | Play | 05:04 | 11 MB | 12 MB |
| 2 | Stabat MaterGiuseppe Verdi | Antonio Pappano | Play | 12:30 | 28 MB | 43 MB |
| 3 | Laudi alla Vergine MariaGiuseppe Verdi | Antonio Pappano | Play | 05:41 | 13 MB | 15 MB |
| 4 | Te DeumGiuseppe Verdi | Antonio Pappano | Play | 15:32 | 35 MB | 55 MB |
| 5 | Ave MariaGiuseppe Verdi | Antonio Pappano | Play | 05:04 | 11 MB | 12 MB |
| 6 | Libera Me | Antonio Pappano | Play | 12:40 | 29 MB | 46 MB |
| 7 | Ave Maria 2 | Antonio Pappano | Play | 05:25 | 12 MB | 14 MB |
| 61 mins | 141 MB | |||||
| 61 mins | 200 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Accademia di Santa Cecilia Chorus | Choir/Chorus |
| 2 | Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra | Orchestra |
| 3 | Maria Agresta | Soprano (Vocal) |
| 4 | Jonathan Allen | Mixing |
| 5 | Valeriano Battisti | Engineer |
| 6 | Giacomo De Caterini | Engineer, Mixing, Recording Editor |
| 7 | Dennis Collins | Liner Note Translation |
| 8 | Georgina Curtis | Design |
| 9 | Igor Fiorini | Technical Engineer |
| 10 | David Groves | Producer |
| 11 | Martin Harris | Marketing Coordinator, Product Manager |
| 12 | Kerry Hill | Production Manager |
| 13 | Giancarlo Iannucci | Assistant Engineer |
| 14 | Stephen Jay-Taylor | Liner Notes |
| 15 | Donika Mataj | Soprano (Vocal) |
| 16 | Luca Moccia | Assistant Engineer |
| 17 | Luca Padovano | Assistant Engineer |
| 18 | Antonio Pappano | Conductor, Primary Artist |
| 19 | Tara Persaud | Production Manager |
| 20 | Leandra Rhoese | Liner Note Translation |
| 21 | Giuseppe Verdi | Composer |
| 22 | Ciro Visco | Chorus Master |
Antonio Pappano
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Verdi - Messa Da Requiem CD 1 - Antonio Pappano, Orchestrea dell'Academia di Santa Cecila
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Puccini: Madama Butterfly CD2 No.2 - Jonas Kaufmann, Angela Gheorghiu, Antonio Pappano
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Puccini: Madama Butterfly CD2 No.1 - Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann, Antonio Pappano
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |