In July 2025 Kazuki Yamada leads the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, Chœur d'enfants de l'Académie de musique Rainier III, and soloists in Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo. Jessica Pratt sings Mary Dee, with Floriane Hasler as Miss Inkley/Nurse, Andrew Owens as Shanty and baritone Erwin Schrott as Headmaster/Preacher/Mr Dingl.
Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio (1990) was devised with composer Carl Davis. The text for the 95-minute work is McCartney’s own and evokes his years growing up in the city and the hold it has on his imagination; across eight movements it follows a its protagonist Shanty, tracing McCartney’s own life story: his birth in the city during wartime, his schooldays at the Liverpool Institute and youthful aspirations – starting points for a work that poignantly and vividly articulates the hopes and joys and crises of life in the modern world. Watch a documentary about the creation of the piece with Carl Davis here.
The Liverpool Oratorio was McCartney’s first foray into the classical idiom, and has proven one of his most successful works, with over 230 performances to date. In 2024 Cincinnati Opera presented its first-ever staging, directed by Caroline Clegg with Joseph Young conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, joined by dancers from the Cincinnati Ballet. Clegg’s staging took inspiration from the Liverpool Blitz Memorial – depicting a mother holding a baby and a boy with a plane on the spiral staircase of an air-raid shelter – and the river Mersea.
Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio was commissioned and first performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus in Liverpool Cathedral, conducted by Davis, with a starry line-up of soloists including Sir Willard White, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Jerry Hadley, and Sally Burgess; it received its US premiere from the same forces in 1991 at Carnegie Hall.