Monumental Messa da Requiem opens Glasshouse Theatre

A last-minute ticket to Verdi's Messa da Requiem has turned out to be life-changing for music lover Kym Jones.

"My eyes would have been like saucers, I was on the edge of my seat ... it was full of stimulation and excitement the whole time," she recalls.

Seeing choreographer Christian Spuck's Ballett Zurich production of Verdi's masterpiece at the 2023 Adelaide Festival inspired Jones to audition for a choir - and she now finds herself part of the cast for Spuck's Messa da Requiem at Brisbane's new Glasshouse Theatre.

The Queensland Ballet production, which premiered on Friday night, is the first staged in the 1500-seat theatre at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

The $184 million theatre was first announced back in 2018 and makes the centre the largest performing arts venue under one roof in Australia.

The Messa da Requiem production is massive too, with more than 170 singers and musicians including the Brisbane Chorale and Canticum Chamber Choir, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, as well as 36 dancers from Queensland Ballet.

Unusually, the cast also includes Queensland Ballet's opera-trained executive director Dilshani Weerasinghe, who sings in the Canticum Chamber Choir.

The soprano has for some months been balancing her day job, three kids, and a partner who is a paramedic, with rehearsals that have become ever more consuming.

Weerasinghe says in 15 years with Queensland Ballet, she has never seen a production of the scale of Messa da Requiem.

"I think it's absolutely mind-blowing," she says.

"It's really an absolute privilege to be a part of it. Even if I wasn't on stage, just to be in and around it is absolutely stunning."

With such a massive cast, a lot is happening onstage at any moment - the audience can simultaneously take in the dancers, the efforts of the soloists, or the choreographed movements of the chorus.

Artistic director Ivan Gil-Ortega, who is in his first season with Queensland Ballet, had the Requiem in mind for the company before he took the job.

A long working relationship with Christian Spuck meant the famed choreographer trusted him to helm an Australian production.

The Requiem is a Catholic funeral mass about the threat of death and the fires of hell, as well as hope and the promise of salvation.

Verdi originally wrote the music for Italian poet Alessandro Manzoni following his death in 1873, and the piece was hugely popular with audiences in concert halls across Europe.

But the composer himself was no stranger to grief: his first wife and two children died within the space of three years.

Centuries later, the Queensland production of his masterpiece has been life-affirming on many levels - for Weerasinghe, it's been the joy of collaborating with other Brisbane arts companies.

"The fact that it's the opening of the Glasshouse, there's some nervousness around it, but there's also this excitement that, wow, we're actually doing this together," she says.

For 62-year-old chorister Jones, it's trying new things - from year eight choir at Toowoomba State High School, to making history at the Glasshouse Theatre.

"I just thought, what's the worst thing that can happen? I just went out on a limb and did an audition and I was successful," she says.

Both Jones and Weerasinghe speak with a sense of awe of the full gamut of human emotions expressed in Messa da Requiem.

"I think that's why people will be engaged the whole time, because we feel that our emotions are our own private thing, but the reality is that they're universal. We all have them," Jones says.

Queensland Ballet's co-production of Verdi's Messa da Requiem runs until April 4.