The occasional concert to celebrate the All Saints’ Day filled all the Rijeka theatre seats, almost also the standing room. Almost 700 spectators wanted to have a live experience of this last masterpiece of the genius of classical music. The audience awarded with a loud applause the original Mozart’s Requiem from the end of his life and artistic path, the one we have not been able to listen to in Rijeka so far. According to their words immediately after the concert, the spectators experienced this Requiem as an intimate, intensive, dramatic and marvelling experience. “An exceptionally beautiful prayer on this day”, “We feel privileged that we in Rijeka could have experienced the original Requiem on this very day! A great conductor, great soloists and the orchestra! They have outdone themselves again”, said the spectators.
Namely, instead of the usual clarinets, we could hear basset horns and the organ – just as Mozart had originally conceived and the Rijeka Opera let its audience experience for the first time at tonight’s performance.
The whole story of Mozart and Requiem is fascinating as the Mass for the Dead was composed by the music genius at his sick bed when he was 35. The last notes, last words and the last breath of the fruitful composer (author of over 600 works) make part of his last opus KV 626, in Requiem. Philipp von Steinaecker conducted this magnificent and immortal work. He was for the first time in Croatia, for the first time in the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc and has been praised not only by the soloists and the orchestra, but the delighted audience as well.
The soloists were the soprano Ingrid Haller, mezzosoprano Ivana Srbljan, tenor Marko Fortunato and bass Sekulić, with the Rijeka Opera orchestra and the chorus together with the Vocal Ensemble of the Pula Music Academy. The chorus master was Nicoletta Olivieri, while Sofija Cingula the leader of the Vocal Ensemble. Romeo Drucker was the concertmaster.
