Sunday Classics preview: The stretch drive of the "Dies Irae" of the Verdi Requiem

The "Rex tremendae" of the Dies Irae of the Verdi Requiem from the 1967 Karajan-La Scala film, with bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, soprano Leontyne Price, mezzo Fiorenza Cossotto, and tenor Luciano Pavarotti

by Ken

Last night we resumed focus on the tenor-solo "Ingemisco" from the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) of the Verdi Requiem (again! it formed part of the main subject of last week's Sunday Classics post). We're going to return to it tomorrow, but for tonight I thought it might be useful to place it in context. My original idea was to listen just to the immediately preceding and following sectios (the "Recordare" and "Confutatis maledictis," respectively), but by the time I finished feeling the need to go extra steps backward and forward, we wound up starting back at the choral "Rex tremendae" (with the soloists' achingly beautiful plea, "Salva me, fons pietatis" -- "Save me, fount of pity") and onward to the end of the Dies Irae, meaning that we link up with the concluding "Lacrimosa," which we already heard last week (along with the tune's origin as a solo for King Philip over the body of the murdered Duke of Posa, which had been cut from the Prison Scene of Don Carlos before the premiere).

(If we had jumped back just two more sections we would also have linked up with the mezzo-soprano's "Liber scriptus," but then we would have been so close to the start of the Dies Irae that it would have seemed silly not to go all the way back to the start. And this is only supposed to be a preview, after all.


TO LISTEN TO THE "STRETCH DRIVE" OF THE
DIES IRAE OF THE VERDI REQUIEM, CLICK HERE

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