ADCH Rossini Petite Messe solennelle

We are excited to work with Australian Digital Concert Hall to present a livestream from three of our choral concerts. You can enjoy these wonderful performances from any where around the world. 

Graham Abbott returns to Festival of Voices to conduct Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle. Performed by the Festival of Voices Classical Choral Workshop Choir and nationally recognised soloists and pianists.

The Petite Messe solennelle (Little solemn mass) was written in 1863 and is arguably one of the most remarkable of all the nineteenth-century choral masterworks. In 2023 we will celebrate 160 years since it was first performed. The style that Rossini uses in his twilight years (this being one of the last works he wrote before his death in 1868) is comparable to the choral music of Haydn, Fauré and Poulenc.

The beautiful melodies in this work are intertwined with the comedic sense of irony that gave Rossini so much of his success with the opera buffa genre. This piece is neither small, nor solemn!

Rossini structured his mass in the tradition of the missa solemnis but added the petite label as a little joke. He wrote on the final page of the manuscript: “Dear Lord, here it is finished, this poor little mass. Have I just written sacred music, or rather, sacrilegious music? I was born for opera buffa, as you know well. Not much technique, a little bit of heart, that’s all.”

The Festival of Voices Classical Choral Workshop Choir will perform under the direction of Graham Abbott with soloists Sharon Prero, Cassandra Seidemann, Nick Seidenman and Samuel Dundas with pianists Jennifer Marten-Smith and Michael Power.