The death of Alessandro Manzoni, whom Giuseppe Verdi almost religiously worshipped, in 1873, deeply affected him, who was then already being admired as Italy’s greatest living composer and who was just going through a creative crisis. The Messa da Requiem is without a doubt a deeply personal composition which expresses the innermost fears of the composer in being confronted with his own mortality. At the same time it is also a very “public” work through which the poet of the Italian people as well as the whole Italian spirit was meant to be honoured in a musical language which embodied the great tradition of Italian music and Italian culture whose disappearance Verdi felt he was witnessing. Recorded live at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, in 1982, this emorable performance features four highly distinguished soloists – Jessye Norman, Margaret Price, José Carreras and Ruggero Raimondi with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of legendary Claudio Abbado.