Opera Memphis joined the Memphis Symphony Orchestra on March 28, 2026 for the only Memphis performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s monumental Requiem, presented under MSO Music Director Robert Moody at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts. A second performance followed in Oxford, Mississippi on March 29.
The collaboration assembled one of the strongest vocal quartets to perform together in Memphis in years: soprano Lauren Margison, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Limmie Pulliam, and bass Kenneth Kellogg. All four are artists with major opera house and concert hall credits, and the ensemble represented exactly the kind of partnership Opera Memphis and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra have been building toward across the past several seasons.
The Verdi Requiem occupies a unique place in the choral-orchestral repertoire. Verdi wrote it after the death of the novelist Alessandro Manzoni in 1873, and the result is a setting of the Catholic Mass for the Dead that draws as much from the operatic stage as from the church. The Dies Irae alone, with its hammered brass and timpani, is among the most viscerally dramatic moments in any sacred work.
The Memphis performance also featured the MSO Chorus and the University of Mississippi Choir, joining Opera Memphis chorus members and the four soloists for an evening that filled the Cannon Center’s mainstage with one of the largest combined ensembles the city has hosted this season. WKNO-FM broadcast the concert live and aired a repeat broadcast on April 3.
For Opera Memphis, the Requiem exemplifies the company’s expanding partnership model. Co-productions with regional orchestras, theaters, and university programs allow the company to present work at a scale that no single organization could mount alone, while keeping ticket prices and access aligned with the company’s community mission.
