Thursday 1 May, Sherborne Abbey

With Chameleon Arts Orchestra

We’re delighted to be opening this year’s Sherborne Abbey Festival with a programme featuring one of the most famous works in the repertoire.

The intrigue surrounding the Requiem is the stuff of Hollywood movies: an anonymous commission for what turned out to be Mozart’s last composition – he died at the age of 35 after finishing the first few bars of the Lacrimosa – added to the ailing composer’s fear that he had been commissioned to write his own Requiem. But there is no disputing the genius and drama of the music, full of fervour and passion and rightly loved by audiences everywhere.

Haydn’s Te Deum in C was written a few years after Mozart’s death, in 1799, during the period other great choral works such as The Creation and the six late masses were written; it’s Haydn at his most joyous and uplifting. Add to this the wonderfully exuberant Exsultate, jubilate, written by a teenage Mozart and sung by young local soprano Amelia Monaghan, and Mendelssohn’s famous Hebrides Overture, and it all makes for a memorable first night of the Festival.

With thanks to Len Copland for the photo of the Festival Chorus’s Festival concert in 2022.

Buy your tickets and find out more about Festival events on the Festival website

We’ve had a lovely big list of singers signing up for this year’s season and have now closed registration. If you’d like to join us in the future, drop us a line for full details.