The Glasshouse

Only performance outside London!

‘Lagrime is a major accomplishment for the Master Chorale, which sang and acted brilliantly. It’s also a major accomplishment for music history.’ Mark Swed LA Times

If you pick only one piece of contemporary performance to try this year, make it this one!

Grant Gershon conductor
Peter Sellars director
Los Angeles Master Chorale

Orlando di Lasso Lagrime di San Pietro
(The Tears of St Peter)

Please note there will be no interval during this performance.

Ground-breaking American director Peter Sellars has created a new, iconic production of a Renaissance masterpiece.

A visceral, enthralling performance – deploying the stellar singers of the LA Master Chorale to such dramatic, contemporary effect that you forget you are listening to music written more than 400 years ago. Beautifully designed and lit, this staging makes the most of the universal story of friendship, betrayal, and grief, packing a raw emotional punch.

Written in the weeks before his death, the composer knew Lagrime would be his last work, and channelled all of his pain and remorse into a towering work of beauty. His final statement.

Director Peter Sellars was so inspired by the power of the music that he decided to create a choral performance unlike any other. Twenty-one singers from Los Angeles Master Chorale – professional choir-in-residence at LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall – bring all their technical excellence to a new vision of artistic daring, singing the entire, intricate 75-minute piece from memory, unaccompanied and thrillingly staged for our times.

“It takes a special group of singers to truly embody the heightened extremes of emotion contained with Lasso’s score…by the end they seem to have almost reached the divine.” Ben Neutze, TimeOut

“Kudos for Sellars and the Master Chorale for opening my ears (and eyes) to the world of a cappella choral music with some indelible visual imageries.” Truman Wong, Classical Voice