Rossini died in Paris on 13 November 1868. Four days later, Verdi proposed to his publisher, Casa Ricordi, that a requiem mass be commissioned in honour of his great predecessor, and that he and 12 others – “the most distinguished Italian composers” – should be invited to write it. A committee compiled the list of those to be approached. Most of the names now mean little, though curiously three composers of that time whose works are remembered today did not contribute: Mercadante reportedly turned down the invitation, while Boito and Ponchielli were thought not mature enough to be included.
By the following summer, the 13-movement work had been assembled – Verdi adding the final Libera Me – and the premiere set to take place in Bologna, “Rossini’s true musical home” according to Verdi, on the first anniversary of his death. But plans for the performance quickly became mired in political and practical difficulties, as well as questions of whether such a collective piece could ever have artistic coherence. The proposed premiere was cancelled, and Verdi, always its driving force, soon lost interest in the project, using a revised version of his contribution as the Libera Me in his own Requiem four years later.
It was more than a century before the score of the Messa per Rossini was rediscovered in the Ricordi archive; it was eventually performed for the first time in Stuttgart in 1988. That performance, conducted by Helmuth Rilling, was subsequently released on CD and DVD, but this new version, recorded at La Scala in November 2017, is an altogether more sumptuous, convincing affair. María José Siri, Veronica Simeoni, Giorgio Berrugi, Simone Piazzola and Riccardo Zanellato as the quintet of soloists and the La Scala chorus are on typically majestic form. Conductor Riccardo Chailly, meanwhile, gives the work tremendous dramatic electricity and sense of authority, even when he cannot disguise the unevenness of the music.
As well as providing the chance to hear some top-quality Verdi as it was originally conceived, the score contains several other striking movements. The brooding opening Requiem Aeternam, by Antonio Buzzolla, for instance, seems to prefigure the same passage in Verdi’s own Requiem, while the tenor setting of the Ingemisco, by Alessandro Nini, has a quasi-operatic quality with its string and choral backdrop, and Lauro Rossi’s Agnus Dei seems to be much more a tribute to Verdi than to anything by Rossini. Altogether a historical curiosity then, but presented as well as anyone could wish.
