Pinchgut Opera’s Eternal Light

Pinchgut Opera’s upcoming program Eternal Light is a celebration of the power and beauty of one of the most famous pieces of Baroque vocal writing: Allegri’s Miserere.

Pinchgut Opera continues its illuminating journey into concert repertoire with its latest presentation, Eternal Light. Conducted by Artistic Director, Erin Helyard, Eternal Light features Australia’s award-winning chorus, Cantillation and the exceptional players of the Orchestra of the Antipodes. Curated by Helyard, the program will feature a newly reconstructed version of Allegri’s famous Miserere, together with the traditional version we all know and love, as well as a rare performance of Biber’s Requiem.

Composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII in the 1630s for the exclusive use of the Papal Choir in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week, Allegri’s Miserere has captivated audiences and composers for centuries. Erin Helyard explains, “The famous Miserere with the high Cs—or what some now call the “English” Miserere—is in fact a beautiful error. In the 19th century a music journalist misread a description of Mendelssohn’s, who heard some astonishingly high notes during a performance, and shoe-horned the ornament into the wrong section. But what a beautiful mistake!”

“I wanted to go back in time to the earliest sources of Allegri’s Miserere, before those amazing high Cs. I hit upon the idea of commissioning award-winning 17th-century ornamentation expert, Australian tenor Jacob Lawrence, to do what was previously thought impossible and that is to put down in notes a version of Miserere that resembles what we know about the ornamented performance practice of Rome in the 1630s. I also wanted to present the version of the Miserere we all know and love too, as a kind of finale that tethers our historical journey with the present.”

At the heart of Eternal Light is Biber’s Requiem in F. The program will also feature two instrumental works of Biber’s teacher, Schmelzer.

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