The first thing you need to know is that Peterborough Singers Artistic Director Syd Birrell and Giuseppe Verdi have a few things in common; they both started out playing the organ, and they both are famously appreciative of a fine soprano voice. These similarities have combined auspiciously to present to Peterborough the opportunity of hearing a moving and dramatic score, the Verdi Requiem, sung by two of Canada's premier female vocalists: Leslie Fagan (soprano) and Laura Pudwell (mezzo-soprano). Of course the other soloists are also excellent! Darryl Edwards (tenor) gives master classes all over the world, and Sean Watson (bass-baritone) has been praised for his "vibrant and robust sound" as well as for his acting ability.

But Verdi really did have a special place in his heart for sopranos. After all, over the course of his life he married one star soprano (pictured in colour above) and, it was rumoured, was romantically attached to another. His first wife, however, was not a professional singer. She was Margherita Barezzi, the daughter of Verdi's friend and patron Antonio Barezzi, and a music pupil of the maestro. Tragically, Margherita died in 1840 at the age of 26, after the devastating deaths of the couple's two infant children in 1838 and 1839.

Giuseppina Strepponi was the first soprano to capture more than Verdi's professional interest, although their relationship was strictly business at first. In 1839, she made her La Scala debut as Leonora in the inaugural production of Verdi's first opera, Operta. At the time, her performance was thought to have been a main reason for the positive reception of the work. Strepponi went on to sing the role of Abigaille in the world premiere of Verdi's Nabucco, reprising the performance throughout Italy and, once again, contributing to the opera's popularity. In 1844, however, Strepponi began to experience vocal trouble. Apparently, her "crystal-clear timbre" had been strained. Some said that Verdi's Nabucco was to blame; the part of Abigaille has been described as "a cruelly punishing role in which the jagged vocal line leaps fiendishly from one register extreme to the other with an eruptive suddenness that would rarely be heard again." Regardless, in October 1846, after being booed by audiences in Palermo the previous year, Strepponi moved to Paris to teach singing. Verdi joined her there in 1847, and the two became life partners until her death in 1897. (As a sop to public opinion, they married in Geneva in 1859.)

But it is Verdi's "second soprano," Teresa Stolz, who has the most to do with his Requiem. From the outset Verdi knew that she would be the soprano soloist, and the part was designed to take advantage of her remarkable voice. According to one contemporary reviewer, "Madame Stolz's voice is a pure soprano, with immense compass and of the most perfectly beautiful quality one ever listened to, from the lowest note to the highest." The review continues:

She takes a tone and sustains it until it seems that her respiration is quite exhausted, and then she has only commenced to hold it. The tones are as fine and clearly cut as a diamond, and sweet as a silver bell; but the power she gives a high C is something amazing. She is said to be the greatest singer in the world; and I presume it is true, as I cannot possibly imagine any one greater than she.