Double Requiem at the Opera

Brahms and Faure Share the Stage

Come and enjoy two of the most gripping requiems ever written for the concert stage – the Requiem by Gabriel Faure and the German Requiem by Johannes Brahms.
Both will be performed at the opening concert of the Liturgical series of the Israeli Opera and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra – February 22 at the Opera House in Tel Aviv and February 23 at the Henry Crown Symphony Hall in Jerusalem.

Canadian born conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson returns to the Israeli Opera to lead this concert with the opera chorus and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
Come and hear Israeli soprano Hila Baggio (the star of the current production of La Fille du Regiment), sing the captivating Pie Jesu from the Faure Requiem as well as the soprano solo in the Brahms opus. She will be joined also by British baritone George Mosley.

There are a lot of similarities between the requiem of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and of Gabriel Faure (1845-1924). Faure and Brahms present the general style of their respective homelands in their requiem. Faure's Requiem is very French in nature. It features only two soloists, an almost unlikely coupling of a soprano and a baritone, and a very chamber orchestra, at least in nature if not necessarily in scope. There is an aura of mystery and sereneness around this specific Requiem, a captivating calmness that foreshadows no doubt French impressionism. Brahms on the other hand has written a "German Requiem" in which he conscientiously departs from the Latin mass by including German texts within the piece. And the result, again with the identical coupling of soprano and baritone, is a piece more Germanic and romantic in nature, and a mass as much for the living as for the dead, an opus that praises the magnanimity of life and the way the living deal with death.

Brahms - Ein Deutcshes Requiem / Faure - Requiem page on the site