Requiem

The Messa da requiem in D minor (1835) is a musical setting of the Catholic funeral mass (Requiem) by Italian opera composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is scored for five soloists (SATB and a baritone), mixed chorus and orchestra. A performance lasts about 62–75 minutes.

Began in October 1835 to commemorate the death of Donizetti's friend and rival Vincenzo Bellini in Naples, the work was left unfinished (probably due to composer unable to conduct it in December, because he was not in the city). It was published in 1870 by Lucca in a vocal with organ arrangement. The first known performance took place the same year in Donizetti's native Bergamo, in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, under Alessandro Nini. It was repeated in 1875 on the occasion of the translation of the remains of Donizetti and his teacher Simon Mayr to Santa Maria Maggiore; then on the centenary of Donizetti's birth (1897) and death (1948, under Gianandrea Gavazzeni).

The manuscript is preserved in the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella (Naples). In 1974 Vilmos Leskó prepared a new Ricordi edition of the Requiem, and since then it came to be regarded as one of the most important non-operatic compositions by Donizetti. It could also influence Giuseppe Verdi in his own Requiem (1873–1874), if he was acquainted with it.

The Requiem for Bellini is one of four Requiem settings by Donizetti, but the only one to survive to the present day. Among the others were a Requiem for Niccolò Zingarelli (composed 1837 in 3 days) and a Requiem for Lorenzo Fazzini [it] (performed in San Ferdinando, Naples, 7 November 1837).

Donizetti's Requiem was performed at the Piazzale del Cimitero monumentale in Bergamo on 28 June 2020, to commemorate the victims of the coronavirus pandemic.

For his setting Donizetti used the traditional Latin Requiem text. The opening Requiem aeternam section is preceded by an orchestral introduction, of which the orchestration is lost. A gradual (In memoria aeterna) follows. While Donizetti completed the Sequentia and Offertorium, there is no trace of Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, which are thought to be never composed. The work concludes with the Lux aeterna and Libera me.