Italian conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti will lead the combined forces of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Chorus in a one-night-only performance of the Verdi Requiem at Chicago’s Symphony Center on Thursday to celebrate the bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth - 10 october 2013. The concert has been sold out for months, but the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has decided to make it available for free to people around the world. Muti's performance will in fact be transmitted via live Internet streaming, the first time the CSO has done so, on its website, www.cso.org/verdi, and on its Facebook page. The Verdi Requiem will be streamed live at 7:30 p.m. CDT (-5 GMT), with a pre-concert show beginning at 7:15 p.m. CDT. The video will also be available on demand following the performance at www.cso.org/verdi. The public may also see the concert at Muti's own website, http://riccardomutimusic.com/eng/. Verdi's Requiem crowns the orchestra's celebration of the Verdi bicentennial. For Muti, it was important to make this performance available to as many people as possible because of the message Verdi brings through the Requiem. “The Requiem is a message of hope, pietà (mercy) and misericordia (compassion) for the living - that is what we need at this moment,” Muti said in a recent interview. “Such a message from Chicago to the rest of the world can help a little bit to spread the sense we need of peace and brotherhood.” Watch the trailer of the concert:
And if the Requiem is not enough, you can listen to all of Verdi's operas through to the end of 2013 on the website of Italian radio station Radio Tre: http://www.radio3.rai.it/dl/radio3/programmi/PublishingBlock-3bf08453-0411-4a5e-be2a-49d917f93216.html?refresh_ce
