MCO unveils new leadership model for 2025/26
Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras announces its first season following the departure of its founder and artistic director Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
The ensemble’s 2025/26 season features four internationally-acclaimed conductors: Spanish maestro Pablo Heras-Casado, French Baroque supremo Christophe Rousset, the German conductor and Romantic music specialist Jacob Lehmann, and the British-Swiss opera singer and artistic director Jonathan Sells.
Gardiner’s controversial departure from the MCO in 2024, following allegations of a physical assault, marked the end of a highly influential conducting career with the organisation he had founded 60 years earlier. The decision to feature a roster of guest conductors for its first post-Gardiner season signals that MCO has moved away from having a single artistic figure at its helm, exploring new repertoire and more varied stylistic approaches drawn from a range of musical traditions from across Europe.
A highlight of the MCO season is the launch of a new partnership with a historic London venue, the recently restored Great Hall in St Bartholomew’s Hospital. This opulent 18th-century space, dating from 1734, features a series of murals by William Hogarth. Following a restoration costing £9.5 million, led by Barts Heritage and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the building reopens to the public this October. MCO will mark the occasion with a celebratory concert of Baroque masterpieces on 12 November, inaugurating an important new central London venue for historically-informed performance.
The MCO’s official season launch takes place on 19 September, with Heras-Casado conducting Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Symphony No. 5, and Bach’s double motet Singet dem Herrn, with performances in London and Rimini, Italy. While this opening programme draws on its Baroque and Classical traditions, the MCO ventures into new territory in October, when Jacob Lehmann leads its first-ever exploration of Rossini, pairing scenes from the composer’s 1819 tragic opera Ermione with the Stabat Mater at London’s Cadogan Hall. Soloists include Beth Taylor and Ana Maria Labin.
In December, Christophe Rousset takes Handel’s Messiah on tour to Paris, Rome, Milan, and London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields. Rousset also features as conductor on a new album with MCO and the English Baroque Soloists, Charpentier: Baroque Christmas, out 26 September on the SDG label.
Spring 2026 brings performances of Bach’s St John Passion led by Peter Whelan, with Nick Pritchard as Evangelist, taking place in London, Barcelona, and Budapest. The season ends in May with a site-specific realisation of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas conducted by Jonathan Sells in the hull of the historic tea clipper, the Cutty Sark, in Greenwich.
View all upcoming UK concerts by the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras on their Continuo Connect artist profile.