19 Teacher to the Nation The scene is the Basilica of Saint Mark, in Milan, in 1874. The church is thronged, as it had been at the beloved man’s funeral one year ago. Now the man’s friend, his hair quite gray, stands on a dais before a vast orchestra and choir, and in quick and tremulous gestures he raises his arms and brings them down, rising and falling again and again, as the words thunder as if from heaven: Dies irae, dies illa, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sybilla! The music rains down like that final fire that will dissolve the world. Yet the man is not angry. The choristers do not sing with fear. For one passionate half-hour they perform that sequence from the Mass for the Dead. It is only one part of the performance. There are the Kyrie and the Sanctus and the other prayers; the Agnus Dei, with a duet of sopranos soaring heavenward in appeal: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem. The conductor is also the composer, Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest genius of opera the world has known. Verdi had been raised Catholic and was an Italian patriot. So was the man who lay in his coffin
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzMzNzY=