Christian Spuck and Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘Messa da Requiem’ at Staatsballett Berlin
Polina Semionova and Doavid Soaris in Messa da Requiem, Staatsballett Berlin. Photo by © Serghei Gherciu
Christian Spuck’s ballet Messa da Requiem is having a good year. Created for Zurich Ballet in 2016, the ballet entered the repertoire of Dutch National Ballet in February 2023. In March, Zurich Ballet performed the ballet at the 2023 Adelaide Festival of the Arts in Australia, to great acclaim. Staatsballett Berlin gave its own premiere of the piece on 14 April 2023. The Berlin premiere was of particular importance: after eleven successful seasons, Spuck is about to leave Zurich Ballet to become the artistic director of Staatsballett Berlin.
What to Expect
A dark stage that looks like the inside of a box, its floor covered with black flakes that could be ashes, or earth. A large chorus and corps de ballet dressed in black, weaving in and out of each other, framing the scene in still, strict rows or dominating it as an undulating, moving crowd confronting the big questions of life implied in the powerful singing of four soloists and the dancing of several ballet soloists: who are we? Where are we coming from? Where are we going? The performance runs for about 1 hour and 30 minutes without intermission, but there is never a dull moment.
Messa da Requiem, Staatsballett Berlin. Photo by © Serghei Gherciu
Christian Spuck and Guiseppe Verdi’s Messa da Requiem
Guiseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was one of Italy’s greatest opera composers. His dramatic operas still form the backbone of the Italian opera repertoire and include Aida, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Otello, Falstaff, Rigoletto and Don Carlos. In April 1874, his Messa da Requiem had its premiere. Verdi wrote this work for the one-year anniversary of the death of the great Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni. The Messa da Requiem is an oratorio, a large-scale, narrative work on a sacred theme for orchestra, a chorus and solo voices. It’s also a requiem: a mass for the dead. But even though the piece had its premiere at a church, only a few days later, it was performed at La Scala, Milan’s famous opera house. Since then, it has become one of Verdi’s most celebrated pieces performed in concert halls across the world.
Christian Spuck first listened to Verdi’s requiem when he was seventeen. He heard it on the radio, and immediately hit the record button on his tape player. Over the following days and nights, he listened to the piece non-stop while working on a school presentation about the writer Franz Kafka: without Verdi, the work would not progress.
From Oratorio to Ballet: Highlights and Dangers
Christian Spuck’s Messa da Requiem is at its most powerful when chorus and corps de ballet fuse into one whole, providing a visual, moving counterpoint to Verdi’s formidable music. The production works best when the score allows the choreographer to transform it into a “Gesamtkunstwerk,” a piece of art that is bigger than its parts because it successfully mergers different art forms together. But there are also moments that fall flat because Verdi’s music soars to the heavens without providing a path for the dancers to follow. As it turns out, not all music is danceable, no matter how great the music or the skills of the choreographer. These moments can be confusing for the viewer, whose brain is torn between its response to the music and the visual fact of seemingly disconnected movements.
Fun Fact
Verdi’s requiem might be an absolute audience favourite, but of all his works, the composer preferred a very different one: a retirement home for old musicians. Shortly before his death, Verdi donated the royalties from his operas to the establishment of a retirement home in Milan for old singers “not favoured by fortune, or who, when they were young, did not possess the virtue of saving. Poor and dear companions of my life!” He did not want to be thanked, and therefore decreed that the home should only be opened after his death. Today, the elegant house still provides a refuge for sixty retired musicians.