In Salzburg, Verdi’s ‘Save Me’ becomes Muti’s farewell cry

When 85-year-old Riccardo Muti took the podium at Salzburg’s Great Festival Hall on August 18, the audience knew it was more than an ordinary concert. Verdi’s Messa da Requiem carried fear, grief, helplessness and the human plea for mercy. In Muti’s hands, it became a quiet farewell to a life in music that has lasted more than half a century.

The concert seemed to close a major emotional chapter. Verdi’s music, built around death, spoke silently with Muti’s own time. At the end, the audience rose to its feet, turning the moment into a tribute to a master whose art has left an enduring mark on shared human memory.

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Save me

The article sets Verdi against Mozart. Mozart’s Requiem, completed by his student Franz Süssmayr after Mozart’s death in 1791, places fear beside surrender. Verdi’s voice is more troubled, questioning and rebellious. Written in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, a moral symbol of Italy’s struggle for unity and independence, Verdi’s work is not simply a prayer for peace. In “Dies irae,” the Day of Wrath descends with terror. In “Libera me,” the plea for salvation becomes almost a confrontation with divine silence.

Muti’s relationship with Salzburg dates back to Herbert von Karajan’s invitation in 1971. He avoided turning the Requiem into a grand “church opera,” instead drawing the Vienna Philharmonic’s deep sound and the Vienna State Opera Chorus down, at times, to a whisper. Alongside the departing master, a younger voice emerged: Maharram Huseynov, born in Baku in 1995. Trained in Azerbaijan and Italy, and a student of Renato Bruson at the La Scala Academy, Huseynov made his Salzburg debut with Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic behind him. His pleas in “Rex tremendae” and “Libera me,” together with his controlled, dark bass in “Confutatis,” pointed toward the next generation as one era began to leave the stage.

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Deliver me