Sydney Symphony Orchestra to Welcome All-Star Guests in October

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor and Artistic Director David Robertson will be joined next month by some of the best opera singers in the world for Beethoven's Missa Solemnis deemed by the composer as "my greatest work". Australian tenor Stuart Skelton, American soprano Susanna Phillips, Russian mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova and Chinese bass-baritone Shenyang will showcase their virtuosity in this highly textured, melodic and often technically demanding mass with the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and a full orchestra, totalling more than 200 performers on stage in these concerts.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor and Artistic Director David Robertson said the sentiment with which Beethoven wrote Missa Solemnis also sums up the motivation of the orchestra in its performances. "On the final manuscript of his Missa Solemnis Beethoven wrote: 'From the heart - may it return to the heart'," Robertson says. "We've invited some of the finest soloists in the world to sing from the heart in this transformative work that invites us to deepen our own experience of the world."

London-based tenor Stuart Skelton says Beethoven's works are monumental both in scope and concept: "Missa Solemnis encapsulates this beautiful dichotomy perfectly," Skelton says. "The SSO are an orchestra that span both the monumental and the intimate in their playing, and David Robertson is a musician and communicator of rare insight and architectural understanding. These concerts are exciting for me in terms of loving this work, this orchestra, this conductor, and all bias considered, this most magnificent of cities, and my home town, Sydney."