Singer

When death claims his wife on their wedding day, Orpheus must brave the Underworld to rescue her. Can his music move the gods themselves? A classic myth brings together Monteverdi’s powerfully expressive score and a new staging by artist and Olivier Award-winning director William Kentridge with Jonathan Cohen conducting.

L’Orfeo

Glyndebourne

The St John Passion is the earlier of Bach’s two surviving settings – although not necessarily his first work in the genre. A more intimate work than the St Matthew Passion, it distils Jesus suffering and sacrifice into a more direct narrative. In part this comes from the distinctive nature of the Gospel of John, with its deep-seated spiritual purity. The church authorities in Leipzig insisted that the Passion story and Jesus’ words could only be told according to the biblical text, but Bach pulls off a clever gambit by interpolating the gospel into a compilation of popular contemporary librettos, such as that by Barthold Heinrich Brockes that Handel and Telemann had set in the previous decade.

St John Passion

Southbank Centre

Extra concert scheduled due to high demand! Principal Guest Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev leads the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's powerful and iconic Requiem, which the composer couldn’t finish before his own death.

EPSG:4326

Extrainsatt! Mozarts Requiem

Berwaldhallen

Principal Guest Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev leads the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's powerful and iconic Requiem, which the composer couldn’t finish before his own death. But first, John Adams' repetitive and pulsating Shaker Loops from 1982, followed by Scottish composer James MacMillan’s Composed in August.

Mozart’s Requiem 

Well this is becoming a very welcome habit! Fresh from his appearance back in October, Kristian Bezuidenhout returns to Gateshead, this time conducting Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Handel's Messiah

The Glasshouse International Centre for Music

Handel’s Messiah stands as one of the most iconic and enduring masterpieces in the classical music repertoire. Since its premiere in 1742, it has captivated audiences around the world with its profound spiritual message, masterful orchestration, and compelling blend of solo and choral writing.

Famed for its dazzling arias and rousing choruses, Messiah offers an unforgettable musical journey through themes of prophecy, birth, passion, resurrection, and redemption.

Handel’s Messiah

Cadogan Hall 

In Act I, the king’s devoutness and ‘marital bliss’ is celebrated ‘amid flowers, sweet breezes and nightingales’ songs’.

Solomon

Handel’s colossal work tells the story of one of the Bible’s most prominent characters, King Solomon, with each of its three acts illustrating his different qualities and exploring the theme of leadership. In Act I, the King’s devoutness and ‘marital bliss’ is celebrated “amid flowers, sweet breezes’ and nightingales’ songs”. Act 2 recognises Solomon’s great wisdom as he dramatically resolves a dispute between two women claiming to be the mother of the same child, whilst the final act highlights the splendour of Solomon’s kingdom through a lavish masque presented to the visiting Queen of Sheba.

Celebrate the coming festivities with one of music’s most uplifting seasonal creations. Originally conceived for Leipzig’s Christmas celebrations in 1734, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio retains all its joy and colour nearly three centuries later, in vivid musical depictions of the Nativity and the Shepherds’ adoration. The Oratorio’s resplendent choruses and intimate solo arias continue to inspire and delight today, whatever your personal beliefs.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio

The Queen's Hall

Buchanan Galleries

When death claims his wife on their wedding day, Orpheus must brave the Underworld to rescue her. Can his music move the gods themselves? A classic myth brings together Monteverdi’s powerfully expressive score and a new staging by artist and Olivier Award-winning director William Kentridge.

L'Orfeo

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes… a space probe hurtles outwards from our solar system; its cargo, a golden record. That’s the starting point for Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners: a new oratorio in which Shaw’s intensely communicative music carries the words of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Carl Sagan into a future bounded only by our imagination, and our courage.

Randall Goosby plays Barber’s Violin Concerto

Barbican Centre

There could be no better way to end the year in which the OAE celebrates the 40th anniversary of its formation in 1986 than with a work that has been a mainstay.

Christmas Oratorio: Parts 1 – 3

This is Bach at his most joyous in a work that celebrates the power of love. Grab the chance to hear all six parts performed over two nights.

Christmas Oratorio: Parts 4 – 6

There could be no better way to end the year in which the OAE celebrates the 40th anniversary of its formation in 1986 than with a work that has been a mainstay. The Christmas Oratorio was first performed as six cantatas, each focusing on a different aspect of the Christmas story, across six feast days in different churches around Leipzig. We begin on the New Year’s Day Feast before joining the Magi on their journey to Bethlehem to honour the baby Jesus. The Evangelist’s narration interweaves with dramatic choruses, chorales and reflective arias from the cast of soloists.

Masaaki Suzuki will conduct his acclaimed his vision of the work, performed according to Bach’s partbooks, with solo singers stepping out of the choir. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists will be integrated with the most brilliant members of a new generation of Bach singers. 

To experience a performance of the St Matthew Passion is to participate in something larger than a concert. For Bach and his congregation, this music formed part of a shared act of devotion, a way of understanding and engaging with the central message of Christianity. But the generosity of Bach’s musical imagination allows the music to resonate beyond its original context with an extraordinary humanity, bringing solace and inspiration to performers and listeners, whatever our beliefs.

Bach’s earlier musical version of the Passion of Christ, the St John, was already extravagant and ambitious by the standards of the time.  The St Matthew, composed for Leipzig in 1727, goes even further, with two choruses and two orchestras, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes in ferocious opposition, sometimes in exultant unity. Bach illuminates the complex structure of the piece with amazing inventiveness, varying the instrumentation and musical structures, interweaving the ancient chorales of his Lutheran forebears through the biblical narrative and the reflective poetry of his collaborator Picander.

“A dream cantata date for Japanese maestro and local supergroup…Here was choral and instrumental Bach performed not just with meticulous professionalism but a dash and verve that filled each movement with an infectious enthusiasm.”

Bach: St Matthew Passion

University of Michigan

University of Georgia Performing Arts Center

University of California, Berkeley

Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Carnegie Hall

Princeton University

The Pennsylvania State University

Dinis Sousa conducts the combined forces of the Monteverdi Choir and Royal Northern Sinfonia in a performance of Bach's legendary St Matthew Passion, 300 years after it was first performed.

Bach: St Matthew Passion - Royal Northern Sinfonia

John Butt conducts Bach's earliest surviving passion. An intense musical drama in which the eternal and mortal collide as the raw, human tragedy of Jesus' death plays out against the backdrop of divine history.

Bass

Florian Störtz

Events

Upcoming events

18 - 25 Jul, 2026

L’Orfeo · Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

23 - 25 Jul, 2026

L'Orfeo · Glyndebourne

Oct 30, 2026

Randall Goosby plays Barber’s Violin Concerto · Barbican Centre

Dec 5, 2026

Christmas Oratorio: Parts 1 – 3 · Southbank Centre

Dec 6, 2026

Christmas Oratorio: Parts 4 – 6 · Southbank Centre

Past events

18 - 25 Jul, 2026

L’Orfeo · Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Mar 29, 2026

St John Passion · Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in Requiem by Mozart

Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Shepherds / Spirits in L'Orfeo by Monteverdi

Glyndebourne

Singer in Solomon by Handel

Southbank Centre

Singer in Weihnachtsoratorium by Bach

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Singer in Messiah by Handel

Royal Northern Sinfonia

Singer in Christmas Oratorio by Bach

Southbank Centre

Singer in Grazhyna by Lyatoshinsky

Barbican Centre

Christus in St John Passion by Bach

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Singer in St John Passion by Bach

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Singer in St Matthew Passion by Bach

Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras

About

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