Jesi, Teatro G.B. Pergolesi – 14 April 2025
W. A. Mozart: Requiem K626
Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana
DRector: Luigi Piovano
by Marialuisa Veneziano
Not a cathedral, but a theatre. Not stone and silence, but velvet, wood and breath. Yet, in the heart of the Pergolesi Theatre of Jesi, this evening, the Requiem Mozart resounded as an intimate lay mass, able to suspend time and breath. If in a large basilica sacred music is echoed and sky, here it is made flesh, look, tremble. Because death, at the bottom, does not live only in the temples: it sits next to us also in the audience, while listening to the beauty that overcomes us.
Luigi Piovano, in the direction, did something beautiful: he led the orchestra as a soul accompanies in the crossing of an invisible border. With measured gesture, almost liturgical, he carved an intense and collected reading, in which each movement seemed to be born from the collective breath between podium and public. The Marchigiana Philharmonic Orchestra responded with depth and sobriety, avoiding any temptation of theatricality: pain does not need ornaments. The Confutatis maledictis has marked a point of vertigo: the contrast between the invocation of the damned and the cry voca me cum benedictis created a moment when music no longer asked for listening, but participation. There, between fire and supplication, we heard the voice of man before the unknown. As Seneca wrote, "no wind is favorable for the sailor who does not know where to go" – but in that passage, it was clear that Mozart knew very well where to lead us: in the heart of doubt.
The Lacrimo it was perhaps the most intimate and moving moment. Fragile, iridescent, as if the whole world holds its breath. "We die every day," Montaigne said, but there are music that make us die better. In that unstoppable trend, which turns out shortly after the beginning, there is all the awareness of the end, and the poignant tenderness of those who still hope, even knowing.
by Osimo (AN)
In "Quam olim Abrahae promisisti", often considered only an escaped passage, Piovano was able to find an authentic tension. The promise to Abraham, that echo of eternity, has become an almost stoic cry: an invitation to trust, to remember that man is a bridge between the flesh and the invisible. Nietzsche wrote that "man is something that must be overcome": in this escape, humanity seemed already beyond itself, launched towards a bright elsewhere. And then the Dies, which shocked the theater as a controlled earthquake. "Day of anger, that day" – and music has become judgment, but also beat. There was no terror here, but awareness. Not the cry of condemnation, but the dignity of those who look in the face of destiny. Kierkegaard reminds us that "life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward": in that straw, the sense of time has turned over.
Also the soloists and the choir, capable of a clear and spiritual surrender, never emphatic. But it is on the orchestra and the conductor who weighed the greatest task: to return the mystery without unveiling it, to guard it without damaging it. Mission accomplished.
And when it seemed that nothing could be added to such fullness, the Ave verum corpus arrived. Not foreseen by Requiem, but bound to it as a secret echo, a fragment of heaven that opens in the clouds. At that time the theater was cradled, breath, sweet vertigo. The voices and arches merged into a suspended prayer, which seemed not to ask for anything, but only to caresss the soul. It was the tenderness of the divine that is lowered, that becomes body – as the text says – "born by the Virgin Mary, really suffered and uncleaned on the cross for man". And in that sound so pure, so unarmed, everyone could feel something that has no name: a presence, a forgiveness, a caress for what within us remains inconsolable. A heavenly moment, which made the eyes shine even to the quietest. As if for a moment, really, we were all embraced by something bigger, and infinitely good.
In the end, more than applause, there was a dense silence, suspended, almost grateful. Like after a confession or a dream. As after having touched, even for an hour, the eternity that dwells within each of us.
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