Heavenwards

Admission is free (without access card).

Towards the end of his life, Giuseppe Verdi, likely the most significant Italian opera specialist, returns to his artistic roots: church music. His four sacred pieces (Quattro pezzi sacri) seem to be striving towards heaven like pillars in a Gothic cathedral. The Ave Maria, sung a cappella, the stirring and painful Stabat Mater, and last but not least, the Te Deum, a hymn of praise in a voluminous, ceremonious setting for double chorus, solo soprano and orchestra: All this is unmistakably Verdi, expert in theatrics and master of musical effects.

100 years before Verdi, another theatre magician turned the church into a big stage: Like many of his works, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Mass in C minor is luminous and magnificent, and at the same time enigmatic and deeply mysterious. To this day, it is not clear why Mozart set to work on this monumental profession of faith: Was he honouring the vow he had made when he married his beloved Constanze Weber in the same year he wrote the mass? Or was it simply the expression of his very own personal spirituality? And what’s more: Why did the composition remain unfinished, just like the Requiem nine years later? What makes the C minor Mass so touching to the day is the immediacy of the emotions and feelings that are conveyed. And when the soprano spins her seemingly endless melodies in the famous aria »Et incarnatus est«, it feels as though the music opens the gates to heaven. A classic Mozart moment.