Mobile Symphony Orchestra to put on Mozart’s ‘Requiem’

MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — The show can’t be put off any longer.

The Mobile Symphony Orchestra is teaming up with the University of South Alabama Concert Choir and the Mobile Opera Chorus to put on a “monumental performance of Mozart’s choral masterpiece, ‘Requiem.'”

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According to a press release, the show will be held on Saturday, April 6, at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, April 7, at 2:30 p.m. at Mobile’s historic Saenger Theatre.

The performance was supposed to come a lot earlier, but orchestra officials said it had to be put off because of the pandemic.

“Of all the concerts we had to postpone due to COVID, this is the one I most regretted not performing in 2020. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem holds a special place in our hearts. If you’ve seen Amadeus, you know Mozart spent time composing it on his deathbed, convinced that he was writing it for his own funeral,” MSO music director Scott Speck said. “Indeed, it has an otherworldly spirituality to it, as if he were writing it partly from the other side.”

Classic Review, a website for all things music, notes that even though it is a staple, Mozart’s Requiem was left unfinished when Mozart died.

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“The version widely performed today is the work of Franz Xaver Süßmayr, who assisted Mozart in the final months of his life.”

Tickets for the performance are listed as $20-$96 and can be purchased online at Mobile Symphony Orchestra’s website, by phone at (251) 432-2010, or at the symphony box (257 Dauphin Street). Student tickets are $10, according to the press release.

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