This concert offers an opportunity to (re)discover two contrasting Masses heard in France during the reigns of Louis XVI and Napoleon. Written by Mozart on his deathbed in 1791, at the urgent request of an enigmatic commissioner, his Requiem was performed for the first time in Paris in 1804, in a slightly reworked version by Luigi Cherubini, who also conducted it. It was a triumph! Some years earlier, in 1774, François Giroust, the last representative of the grand motet à la française, had been commissioned to compose the music for the coronation of Louis XVI at the Cathedral of Reims.

In collaboration with Arion Baroque Orchestra