VCA launches tickets for a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in April

The Valletta Cultural Agency has announced a major Lenten production – Mozart’s Requiem and Masonic Funeral Music – two musical masterpieces which will be held in collaboration with the 40-strong Italian choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with the participation of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.

A number of international soloists including soprano Hanna Husáhr, mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, tenor Toby Spence, and bassist Karl Magnus Fredriksson will participate in this production which takes place under the musical direction of Maltese-Dutch conductor Lawrence Renes at St Dominic’s basilica, on April 2 at 8pm, in Valletta.

Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on December 5 of the same year. A completed version of Mozart’s Requiem, dated 1792, by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who commissioned the piece for a requiem service to commemorate the anniversary of his wife's death on February 14.  Mozart’s ‘Masonic funeral music’ was composed in 1785. This is a short but extremely poignant work, considered one of Mozart's absolute masterpieces, but rarely performed due to the...