PRESS RELEASE October 22, 2025
This year’s Moravian Autumn is coming to an end. On Sunday, it will conclude with a gala concert featuring Claudio Monteverdi’s Marian Vespers. “When I heard this work performed by La Tempête for the first time, the singer’s first notes took my breath away. Monteverdi’s spiritual opera is a spiritual masterpiece in itself, but the ensemble’s artistic director, Simon-Pierre Bestion, has also infused it with French faux-bourdons from a 17th-century manuscript from southern France and Gregorian chants in a unique performance by a solo singer. The result is a deeply spiritual, innovative opus tinged with Mediterranean exoticism,” said Marie Kučerová, director of the Brno Philharmonic, which organizes the festival. The Brno performance will be complemented by work with stage and off-stage space, movement, dance, light design, and other scenic effects.
Revealing the connections and influences between individual artists, cultures, and eras is typical for the French vocal-instrumental ensemble La Tempête. “They are renowned for their highly intuitive and sensual approach to the works they perform, which has been praised by critics both at home and abroad. This approach leads the ensemble’s repertoire to combine a number of aesthetic directions, drawing not only on early music, but also on traditional folk repertoire and contemporary works,” added Kučerová.
Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin) is one of Claudio Monteverdi’s most mature compositions. It is also a milestone in the history of music, as this composition, born of old traditions, heralded the dawn of entirely new ones. The work is a showcase of all of Monteverdi’s musical skills, a composition for one to ten voices and a rich instrumental ensemble. “It is music that speaks to us across a time gap of almost four centuries, music that is exciting because it is the work of a genius artist who embodied in it not only his mastery of contrapuntal voice leading, but above all his own deep emotional experience of sincere piety,” said musicologist Petr Slouka.
Tickets are available at the philharmonic box office, online at moravsky-podzim.cz, and at the venue half an hour before the concert begins.
Media contact: Kateřina Konečná, katerina.konecna@filharmonie-brno.cz, +420 775 426 040