Manzoni Requiem

Name sometimes given to Verdi's Requiem, composed in 1873 for the anniversary of the death of Alessandro Manzoni, on which it was first performed in Milan at the church of San Marco on 22 May 1874; the performance was repeated at La Scala on 25 May. The ‘Libera me’ is adapted from that contributed by Verdi to the collective Requiem he suggested should be written by various Italian composers on the death of Rossini in 1868, a plan which did not materialize. That the ‘Libera me’ was not merely taken over as it stood is proved by the fact that it contains allusions to material occurring earlier in the Manzoni Requiem. The ‘Lachrymosa’ is derived from the prison scene in the first version of Don Carlos (1867).