Join the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir as they bring to life the works of musical giants Bach, Purcell, and Handel. From the revolutionary 'St John Passion' to the immersive 'Dido and Aeneas' and the stirring 'Theodora', these performances promise to captivate audiences across Europe. Conducted by maestros like Peter Whelan, Jonathan Sells, and Christophe Rousset, these events highlight the timeless nature of Baroque music while offering a modern and interactive twist.

A Dive into Baroque: Exploring Bach, Purcell, and Handel with English Baroque Soloists

Dive into a series of captivating performances by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists as they bring Baroque masterpieces to life. Experience Bach’s St John Passion, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Handel’s Theodora, each uniquely presented with a modern twist. Under the expert guidance of conductors Peter Whelan, Jonathan Sells, and Christophe Rousset, these performances promise to captivate audiences across Europe, showcasing the timeless beauty and complexity of Baroque music.

Reviving Baroque Masterpieces: A Journey with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists

An immersive production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, conducted by Jonathan Sells and directed by Andrew Staples.

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists present Purcell’s operatic masterpiece, with the Cutty Sark as a stunning backdrop. A cast of leading soloists bring this drama – based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid – to life as never before.

With the hull of the historic ship looming over the narrative like a spectre of the Trojan fleet, the production will incorporate Purcell’s Funeral Sentences, written for the funeral of Queen Mary who founded the Royal Hospital for Seamen, on the site of the present Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Cutty Sark

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists perform Bach’s masterpiece with Olivier Award winner Peter Whelan.

The crowning glory of Bach's first Leipzig cantata cycle, his revolutionary St John Passion changed the course of liturgical music history, stamping his interpretation of the gospel in his largest-scale work to date.

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists have shaped modern audiences' understanding of this music for over 60 years with vivid and compelling performances. Baroque specialist Peter Whelan returns to direct the ensembles, after a critically-acclaimed debut with them in 2024.

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Bach: St John Passion

Palau de la Música Catalana

Müpa Budapest

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Following a triumphant debut with the Monteverdi Choir in December 2024, celebrated French baroque specialist Christophe Rousset brings his dramatic flair to Handel’s thrilling oratorio this Christmas.

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists have been performing historically-informed Handel for almost 50 years, and are “unbeatable in the performance of this repertoire” (Scherzo). A stellar cast of soloists will join “the best choir in the world” (Trouw), bringing MCO’s trademark immediacy and drama to Handel’s festive masterpiece for the first time in over three decades.

Handel: Messiah

Église Saint-Roch

Teatro alla Scala

Auditorium Parco della Musica

Messiah

St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, London

La Scala Theatre

Saint-Roch Church, Paris

Following their thrilling performances of J.S. Bach motets with Jonathan Sells at the Leipzig Bach Festival in 2024, the Monteverdi Choir performs two of his miniature masterpieces in 2025, alongside Handel’s barnstorming setting of Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus.

This concert will allow the Choir and English Baroque Soloists to unleash the full range of their expressive potential, from the plangent intimacy of Purcell’s Funeral Sentences to Handel’s virtuosic vocal and instrumental writing.

Sing to the Lord a New Song

Snape Maltings

Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads two of his period ensembles in a remarkable moment for Carnegie Hall history: our first complete performance of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato since 1895, described by an attending critic as “one of the greatest and most completely beautiful choral works ever written” (The Sun). Composed during Handel’s gradual transition from opera to oratorio, and based on the poetry of John Milton, it’s an enchanting work with notable solos for singers and instrumentalists.

English Baroque Soloists

Carnegie Hall

The combined forces of the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir create a remarkable moment: Carnegie Hall's first complete performance since 1895 of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

English Baroque Soloists at Carnegie Hall

Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir in music for which he is most renowned: J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor, a work widely considered a pinnacle not just of choral music, but of Western music as a whole. Gardiner sees “the mass as a compendium of all the different styles and approaches that J. S. Bach took across 30 or 40 years of music making.” With his esteemed period ensembles, he brings this music to life with a vibrancy made possible by a lifetime of passionate exploration and performance.

One of the world’s most innovative musicians, Sir John Eliot Gardiner founded the Monteverdi Choir to share Italian music with a British audience accustomed to the English choral tradition. Over the next 60 years the choir has grown to include an extensive repertoire encompassing music from the Renaissance through 20th century classical music, earning Gardiner a knighthood and the honor of performing at King Charles III’s coronation. Ahead of a performance at Carnegie Hall, Gardiner will conduct the Monteverdi Choir in a performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor at McCarter with the English Baroque Soloists.

Bach: Mass In B Minor

Alexander Hall

One of the world’s leading period instrument orchestras, the English Baroque Soloists, led by founder and multi-Grammy-winning conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, appear in an exquisite and historically informed performance of early music.</p>
<p>Throughout its repertoire, ranging from Monteverdi to Mozart and Haydn, the English Baroque Soloists are equally at home in chamber, symphonic and operatic performances and the distinctive sound of its warm and incisive playing is instantly recognizable. The orchestra has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Teatro alla Scala, Milan, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Sydney Opera House.</p>
<p>Sir John Eliot Gardiner is revered as one of the world’s most innovative and dynamic musicians, constantly in the vanguard of enlightened interpretation and standing as a leader in contemporary musical life. His work, as founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir (MC), English Baroque Soloists (EBS) and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR), has marked him out as a key figure both in the early music revival and as a pioneer of historically informed performances.

English Baroque Soloists & Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Gardiner's interpretations of Baroque and Classical music have brought him worldwide acclaim, having recorded over 250 albums and appeared at every major concert hall. He is the master without equal. Under his baton, Mozart will find a pristine home at The Soraya.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists

Nahezu zeitgleich sind die Werke von Georg Friedrich Händel und Johann Sebastian Bach entstanden, die John Eliot Gardiner mit den English Baroque Soloists und dem Monteverdi Choir beim Musikfest Berlin präsentiert. Beeindruckende Zeugnisse aus dem Frühwerk der beiden großen Barockmeister!

Händel | Bach

Philharmonie

Continuing our exploration of Handel oratorio in 'staged' concert performances, Christophe Rousset brings his trademark operatic panache to this transcendental work. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists are joined by an international cast of soloists, each of them acclaimed for their thrilling performances of Handel.

London in 1750: rocked by earthquakes, and stunned by the 65-year-old Handel’s penultimate oratorio. The adopted Englishman had abandoned his tried-and-tested Old Testament formula for a work set in Christian times, and ending not with triumph and fanfare, but the minor-key death of hero and heroine.

The 18th-century audience shunned Theodora, but 225 years later this story of devotion and martyrdom is firmly recognised as a masterpiece, containing some of Handel’s greatest arias (‘As with rosy steps the morn’; ‘With darkness deep’; ´Angels ever bright and fair’), and choruses which range from the rollicking to the pious to the anguished.

The Monteverdi Choir is amongst the world’s greatest exponents of Handel oratorio, and Theodora requires the choir’s whole expressive spectrum, stretching from the piety of oppressed Christians, to the orgiastic revels of Roman pagans.

Handel: Theodora

Julio Prestes

Salle Gaveau

Teatro Municipal de Lima

Teatro Solís

Teatro Colón

Schwarzman Centre

Handel's great oratorio is one of the most celebrated choral works of the 18th century. A radical vision of faith and freedom.

London in 1750: rocked by earthquakes, and stunned by the 65-year-old Handel’s penultimate oratorio. The adopted Englishman had abandoned his tried-and-tested Old Testament formula for a work set in Christian times, and ending not with triumph and fanfare, but the minor-key death of hero and heroine.

The 18th-century audience shunned Theodora, but 225 years later this story of devotion and martyrdom is firmly recognised as a masterpiece, containing some of Handel’s greatest arias (‘As with rosy steps the morn’; ‘With darkness deep’; ´Angels ever bright and fair’), and choruses which range from the rollicking to the pious to the anguished.

The Monteverdi Choir is amongst the world’s greatest exponents of Handel oratorio, and Theodora requires the choir’s whole expressive spectrum, stretching from the piety of oppressed Christians, to the orgiastic revels of Roman pagans. Continuing our exploration of Handel oratorio in ‘staged’ concert performances, Christophe Rousset conducts the Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, bringing his trademark operatic panache to this transcendental work. They are joined by an international cast of soloists, each of them acclaimed for their thrilling performances of Handel.

Harpsichordist and conductor Francesco Corti leads a festive programme that unites three composers at the heart of the Venetian school and its international influence: Gabrieli, Schütz and Monteverdi.

Giovanni Gabrieli was the defining figure of the Venetian polychoral tradition, writing magnificent works for spatially-separated vocal and instrumental choirs that exploited the immense architecture of St Mark’s. His student, Heinrich Schütz, fused the grandeur and theatricality of this Venetian style with the Lutheran intimacy and theological intensity of his native Germany. And Monteverdi, who became maestro di cappella at St Mark’s not long after Gabrieli’s death, brought his unique sense of drama and emotional immediacy to Venice’s ceremonial musical tradition.

Taking the Christmas Eve services as our guide, this programme weaves together the psalms and grand Magnificat of Vespers with the Mass and instrumental sonatas for Midnight Mass. This music is the raison d’être of the Monteverdi Choir, and together with the specialist period-instrument players of the English Baroque Soloists, they will recreate the glorious sound-world of a seventeenth-century Venetian Christmas.

Venetian Christmas

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.”

English Baroque Soloists

2 - 19 Nov, 2026

Handel: Theodora

Nov 18, 2026

Handel: Theodora

Dec 17, 2026

Venetian Christmas

9 - 23 Feb, 2027

Bach: St Matthew Passion

May 21, 2026

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Mar 6 - Apr 3, 2026

Bach: St John Passion

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