Crystal Pite’s choreography of Morten Lauridsen’s celebrated motet O Magnum Mysterium appears at Sadler’s Wells in October 2024 with the National Ballet of Canada, as part of the triple-bill of Canadian choreographers Frontiers. It then appears at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées from 12-15 October, alongside William Yong’s Benjamin Britten choreography UtopiVerse.
Lauridsen’s 6-minute work for unaccompanied mixed voices features alongside music by Tchaikovsky and Owen Belton as part of Pite’s Angels’ Atlas, commissioned by National Ballet of Canada in 2020. The ballet, which won a Dora Award, unfolds against a spectacular, morphing wall of light that carries the illusion of depth and a sense of the natural world. The dancing body becomes a sign of humanity’s limitations within a vast, unknowable world, underlined by the awestruck mysticism of Lauridsen’s spellbinding motet. Angels’ Atlas has also been performed by Staatsballett Berlin in April 2024 and previously by Ballett Zürich in October 2021.
In 2010 O Magnum Mysterium was choreographed by Carlos Acosta for his show Premieres at the London Coliseum for a duet with Zenaida Yanowsky, performed by Pegasus Choir live onstage. His choreography subsequently featured in the follow-up ballet On Before, which tells the story of a doomed relationship between a man and a woman. On Before toured the UK in the first half of 2024, appearing at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Plymouth’s Theatre Royal, the Birmingham Hippodrome, and at Buxton International Festival.
Faber Music has published the best-selling choral octavo since 2002 (under licence from Lauridsen's US publisher, Peermusic). Lauridsen created a violin and orchestra version of O Magnum Mysterium for US violinist Anne Akiko Myers in 2015, recorded on her Avie Records album, ‘Mirror in Mirror’, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Kristjan Järvi; she has also recorded his version for violin and SATB chorus (with Los Angeles Master Chorale and Grant Gershon).