MONMOUTH Choral Society’s concert this weekend will feature a performance of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, a rare religious work from a composer best known for his many operas.

The event will be held at St Mary’s Priory Church, Monmouth at 7.30pm on Saturday 17th June.

The concert will be conducted by Steven Kings, Monmouth Choral Society’s director of music.

The extraordinary, and very demanding, accompaniment will be provided by Gus Tredwell, piano, and Peter Dyke, harmonium.

The soloists are Rhiannon Llewellyn, soprano, Helen Anne Gregory, alto, Andrew Henley, tenor and Meilir Jones, bass.

During his lifetime Rossini became the most popular composer of operas there had ever been, one of the leading celebrities of his time.

His output was phenomenal, his first full opera was written when he was just 18, in 1810, and over the following 19 years he wrote 38 more significant operas.

After retiring completely from the theatre at the top of his powers, aged 37, for decades he wrote very little music.

However towards the end of his life, aged 71, he produced his Petite Messe Solennelle. Rossini was being somewhat ironic when he described the work as “petite”.

It is structured in several extended movements in the tradition of the missa solemnis. But one of the features that makes it stand out from the rest of the cannon is the highly unusual scoring, originally for harmonium and two pianos, now normally performed without the second piano.

Talking about Rossini Steven Kings said: “Some say that Rossini’s Little Solemn Mass is neither little nor solemn!

“Well, it is certainly not little, lasting for an hour and a half and filling a whole concert. But there is real solemnity at times, indeed a whole gamut of intense religious feeling.

“There is also plenty of energy and high spirits -- not least in the two enormous fugues that crown the Gloria and the Credo.

“Rossini employs the operatic style of early-19th-century Italy to express every aspect of human spirituality and devotion, and the result is a truly great (and entertaining) sacred choral work.”

Tickets are £16 (under-18s £5) and are available from the choir’s box office, telephone 01594 531496, online at www.monmouthchoralsociety.co.uk, or on the door.

The choir’s following concert, on Saturday 11th November at the Blake Theatre, Monmouth, will be a feast of music by Vivaldi: his Dixit Dominus, Gloria and Magnificat.

The choir’s Christmas concert, at Trellech Church on Saturday, 9th December, will include the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on christmas carols.