Free Admission concert in Milan Cathedral at 3 p.m.
Great international choral music returns to resound through the aisles of Milan Duomo. On Sunday 21 June 2026, at 3pm, the Cathedral will welcome one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious university ensembles: The Choir of Royal Holloway.
The event will offer Milanese residents and visitors an extraordinary opportunity to listen to a world-class vocal ensemble, renowned for its purity of tone and its acclaimed interpretations of sacred and contemporary music.
Admission to the concert is free of charge, subject to availability. Doors open at 2.30pm via the main façade entrance reserved for worshippers (Piazza del Duomo, Portone Fedeli – Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II side).
The musical afternoon will begin at 3pm with a concert programme of exceptional calibre, led by director Mark Wilde and accompanied by organists Daniel Ayers and Logan Williamson.
The spiritual and sonic journey will commence with the contemporary evocations of Vytautas Miškinis’s Dum medium silentium and Eric Whitacre’s celebrated piece I thank you god for this most amazing day. This will be followed by an atmospheric juxtaposition of past and present through the hymn Te lucis ante terminum, presented first in the historic Renaissance version by Thomas Tallis and immediately after in a contemporary reimagining by Nathan James Dearden.
The central section of the concert will feature performances of two intense, self-titled settings of Hear my prayer, composed respectively by the Baroque master Henry Purcell and the composer Kerensa Briggs, followed by Ivo Antognini’s Come to me. A grand solo moment will be entrusted to the organ of Daniel Ayers, who will perform the Grands Jeux from Jean Langlais’s “Suite Brève”. The choir will then return to the stage for the grand finale of the concert, performing in succession William Harris’s Faire is the heaven, the Magnificat (from “The Jesus College Service”) by William Mathias, and Jonathan Dove’s evocative Seek him that maketh the seven stars, before concluding with the monumental Hail, gladdening light by Charles Wood.
Following the concert, the British ensemble will transition from the concert performance to the liturgical service itself. Indeed, at 5pm, the Choir of Royal Holloway will accompany the Eucharistic celebration at the High Altar. During the liturgy, the ensemble will perform parts of the Ordinary and the Proper, alternating the Gloria and Sanctus from French composer Yves Castagnet’s Messe Brève with Lucy Walker’s offertory anthem O nata lux and Sergei Rachmaninov’s famous communion hymn Bogoroditsye Devo.
Founded in 1886 alongside the eponymous College of the University of London, the Choir of Royal Holloway is today considered one of the finest mixed vocal groups in the United Kingdom. Composed of 24 young Choral Scholars aged between 18 and 21, the ensemble is distinguished by a demanding schedule of 40 to 50 concerts a year and an award-winning international discography. Guiding them on this prestigious visit to Milan will be Director Mark Wilde, a musician of great renown and professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
For those unable to attend in person, the 3pm concert will be streamed live on the YouTube “Duomo Milano Tv“.
For further information
Duomo Infopoint
Tel +39.02.72023375
