Cecilia Bartoli Records With The Sistine Chapel Choir
Superstar soprano Cecilia Bartoli has joined the Sistine Chapel Choir for one magical track on their new album Veni Domine, making it the first time in history that the choir has made a recording with a female singer. The album is available on the Deutsche Grammophon label from tomorrow, 27 October, 2017.
The album’s repertoire is based on original manuscripts of the Sistine Chapel Choir Archive in the Vatican Library from 11th to 17th Centuries. After the albums Cantate Domino (2015) and Palestrina (2016) this year’s Veni Domine – Advent & Christmas at the Sistine Chapel, is the third installment of the collaboration between Deutsche Grammophon and the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Choir, directed by Monsignor Massimo Palombella.
Many of the works on this recording, by composers such as Palestrina and Allegri, were written to form part of Papal Celebrations for Advent and Christmas, and have never been heard before. The enigmatic and complex motto of Allegri Nasceris, alme puer is the most precious discovery on this album and has never been published before.
Other world premiere recordings on this album include the extraordinary Christmas hymn Christe, Redemptor omnium by Marenzio and the motet Conditor alme siderum by Dufay. We hear Nanino’s complex motet Hodie nobis caelorum Rex – Gloria in excelsis Deo as well as Palestrina’s Dies sanctificatus illuxit nobis for the first time with “color minor” ornamentation.
