The 2016 Proms season draws to a close with a bang not a whimper, with Verdi's thunderous Requiem. Marin Alsop is at the helm of the penultimate prom, conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the BBC Proms Youth Choir.

Tom Service introduces for television and talks to Marin Alsop backstage. The soloists lining up for Verdi's largest scale non-operatic work are soprano Tamara Wilson, mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova, Dimitri Pittas and bass Morris Robinson.

The Requiem had its British premiere in 1875 at the Royal Albert Hall with the composer himself conducting and it is still packing the audiences in. Its fire and brimstone depiction of death and destruction never fails to appeal, most famously of all in the tumultuous Dies Irae. Show less