Pappano's Verdi Requiem triumphs again

The Classical Brits bestows its Critics' Prize on a deserving recipient

Having trailblazed in the Choral category at the 2010 BBC Music Magazine Awards, Antonio Pappano's EMI recording of the Verdi's Requiem with stylish Italian forces and a top-notch quartet of soloists has just been awarded the Critics' Prize at the tawdry but compelling mix of the sublime and the ridiculous that is the Classical Brits.

And well deserved it is, too. When did you last hear a Verdi Requiem with a truly operatic, 80-strong Italian chorus? That makes all the difference. And the fact that the finest Verdian soprano of our day, Anja Harteros, crowns it all with a "'Libera me" of blistering intensity sets the seal. Pappano's comment was telling: "Recording the Verdi Requiem was a labour of love, and fear!... This is a great honour for both the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. It comes at a very critical moment when Santa Cecilia is faced with proposed drastic cuts to its funding from the government in Italy."

The tireless and endlessly curious Pappano has been doing well all round with his Rome team. Their delicately-coloured recording of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, another top recommendation in a crowded field, claims another Classical Brit award: "Best Female Artist of the Year" goes to Angela Gheorghiu for her luminous Cio-Cio San. How well I remember Gheorghiu at a previous Classical Brits evening following Russell Watson on to the platform and talking, with a no doubt purposeful slip of her English, about "performers who try hardly to sing this music". Well, she may be a bit of a diva, but she deserves to be.

  • Find Verdi's Requiem conducted by Antonio Pappano and the Ochestra and Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia on Amazon

Vincere Special 1: Fascism is Dead, Long Live Il Duce

Man or monster: the humanising of Mussolini

Applauded by the audiences at Cannes last year, where it was the only Italian film in the competition, and nominated for a Palme d’Or, awarded four prizes at the Chicago International Film Festival, and favourably received at home, Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere is now being released in the UK, increasingly a rare event for films of Italian origin.

theartsdesk in the Vatican: In an Audience with the Pope

Haydn privately performed for Benedict XVI

At the Vatican, recently, the Pope attended a concert in his honour in the Sala Clementina. This is the great double-height room which stands at the entrance to the private papal apartments; it is where Pope John Paul II’s body lay in state almost exactly five years ago. I was one of about 150 guests, at least a third of whom were cardinals, bishops and other senior clerical figures. As we arrived there was the most ornate and intricate gavotte of seat-taking, lasting a good 40 minutes.

Greatest Cities of the World, ITV1

When in Griffland, do as Griff does: grimace, chortle, frown

You always know where you are with Griff. You may be up a mountain or on a river or visiting any of the various topographical options the various TV companies deem it essential to send him. You may be doing up his house with him in Wales, where he freely admits he doesn’t really come from, or nosing round London, Paris or New York, as he did in the last series of Greatest Cities of the World. You may, as with the new series, be in Rome. But in the end, you never leave the Land of Griff.

Ottorino Respighi, the forgotten composer

Why the Italian composer's reputation needs rescuing

The latest subject in the BBC Four series of composer portraits by Christopher Nupen is Ottorino Respighi. One of the most unfairly neglected major composers of the first half of the 20th century, his reputation has suffered less from not being considered at all, but for having been confined to his trilogy of tone poems that evoke respectively the Fountains, the Pines and the Traditional Festivals of Rome. Nupen's film, made in 1982, puts a welcome case for his more challenging but less well-known work.

theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Antonio Pappano

On his life and loyalities divided between Rome and London

Antonio Pappano (b. 1959) enjoys the best of two opulent worlds. At the Royal Opera House in London (now his home city), he's well stuck in to his seventh season as music director, basking in popularity and plaudits previous incumbents could only have dreamt of. In Rome, he's director of the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, a post he took up in 2005.

theartsdesk in Rome: Building the Future, Slowly

Piano, piano: Rome still isn't being built in a day

The rapturous reception for Zaha Hadid’s groundbreaking, breathtaking new confection in Rome, Il Museo dell’Arte del XXIesimo Secolo - the 21st-Century Art Museum (MAXXI for short) - has reopened for the umpteenth time one of Italy’s favourite cultural debates. Why the hell does it take so long to build anything decent in our capital city, especially when we have one of the finest traditions - if not the finest - in architecture, civil engineering and construction, of anywhere in the whole world?

theartsdesk in Milan: Death of a Quiz Show Host

Italy mourns Silvio Berlusconi's TV alter-ego

“Guarda, è come se fosse morta la regina Elisabetta, sai?” I didn’t really need the comparison with the hypothetical demise of our own beloved monarch to be spelled out for me by my partner, a somewhat reserved professor of Paediatric Neurology at one of Rome’s leading hospitals, in order to drive home the deep shock engendered by the sudden death of Italy’s best-loved veteran TV compère on the collective psyche of a nation.
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