NOSPR / Charles Dutoit - NOSPR

The Cathedral Church of St Michael in Coventry was ruined on 14 November 1940 , bombed during one of the heaviest Luftwaffe raids of the Blitz campaign. The foundation stone of the new cathedral, built next to the remains of the old church, was laid 16 years after the war. In May 1962, the cathedral was consecrated, a ceremony marked by the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem. The composer combined the text of the Requiem Mass with poems by Wilfred Owen, a tragic poet-soldier who fell in battle on the French front just before the Compiègne armistice. As a token of ultimate reconciliation – after two world-wide conflicts – the intention was that the soloists should be of three nationalities: British (Peter Pears), German (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), and Russian (Galina Vishnevskaya). The Soviet Minister of Culture did not permit Vishnevskaya to leave the country, so she had to be replaced by Heather Harper (Irish). “No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning,” wrote Owen in his Anthem for Doomed Youth, a poem Britten set in the first part of the piece. The premiere was followed by a telling silence: at the composer’s request, there was no applause after the performance. The idealistic goal has nonetheless been achieved: today, War Requiem is regarded as the most powerful music manifesto of pacifism, not only among Britten’s works.