Hector Berlioz 's setting of the Solemn Mass, composed when he was a student in Paris in 1824, was long thought to have been destroyed by its composer.
For tonight's British premiere of the recently rediscovered Mass, broadcast live from Westminster Cathedral, conductor John Eliot Gardiner , the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et
Romantique reconstruct
Berlioz's vast forces for the work, reviving such long-forgotten instruments as serpents and ophicleides, and are joined by soloists Donna Brown (soprano), Jean-Luc Viala (tenor) and Gilles Cachemaille (bass).
Michael Berkeley introduces the performance and tells the extraordinary story of how the work came to survive.
Director Barrie Gavin
Producer Jonathan Fulford
Event sponsored by British Telecommunications
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As coverage Is live, subsequent programmes may run late.