The Latest: Italy honors its virus dead with Bergamo concert

ROME — Italy is honoring its coronavirus dead with a Requiem concert performed in front of the cemetery in Bergamo, one of the hardest-hit provinces in the onetime epicenter of the European outbreak.

President Sergio Mattarella, the 243 mayors of cities in Bergamo province and a representative of families who lost loved ones have been invited to attend the evening concert, which is being transmitted live on RAI state television. It will feature the Requiem Mass composed by Bergamo native Gaetano Donizetti, one of Italy’s most important 19th century composers.

Bergamo recorded its first positive case Feb. 23 and by the end of March had registered a 571% increase in excess deaths compared to the five-year monthly average. Images in mid-March of an army convoy hauling caskets away because Bergamo’s cemeteries and crematoriums were full came to epitomize the horrific toll of the virus in Italy’s north.

Donizetti composed the unfinished Requiem to honor his friend and fellow composer, Vincenzo Bellini, who died in 1835. During the peak of the epidemic, Bergamo’s Donizetti Theater and the city government put on social media the recording of a 2017 performance of the Requiem Mass to honor the victims.

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