O SIDERA - Arsenal de Metz

Founded in 2015 by its musical director Lila Hajosi, a musicologist and opera artist specialising in early music, Ensemble Irini stands at the crossroads of medieval and Renaissance polyphony from the West and Orthodox and Eastern Christian traditions. Conceived for mixed a cappella vocal quintet, O Sidera ('O Heavens') questions the mystery of existence by bringing together the Sibylline Prophecies, a series of enigmatic pieces composed by Roland de Lassus in 1554-1555, and extracts from the Byzantine liturgical repertoire, offering the listener a hypnotic journey conducive to spiritual contemplation.

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