On Sunday evening, the Vatican opened its Sistine Chapel to a concert that it described as exceptionally rare, debuting a new work centered on “interactions with angels found throughout the Bible.” The event unfolded in Vatican City with the ceiling and fresco imagery of Michelangelo’s chapel as a visible backdrop, and it took place behind tight access rules that limited what guests could capture on personal devices.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, archbishop of Westminster, addressed the invite-only group before the start, telling the roughly 200 attendees—mostly native English speakers—that they could not use phones to film or photograph the premiere. Vatican officials routinely restrict such access, and the chapel’s music events, when they occur, are typically reserved for invited guests.
The performance featured a 70-minute oratorio, “Angels Unawares,” made up of 12 pieces, each tied to a separate biblical narrative. The event presented angels as figures embedded in familiar scripture stories, and it included staging that pointed viewers to the chapel’s own art—such as depictions associated with Moses’ life and death and imagery connected to Michelangelo’s account of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Among the performers, the British choir The Sixteen sang the English lyrics while Cambridge-based chamber orchestra Britten Sinfonia accompanied. The oratorio’s sequence included “The Song of Tobias,” in which the protagonist repeatedly scolds himself for not recognizing the archangel Raphael, according to the program as performed; the tenor soloist sang lines that culminated in a question of recognition before the orchestra swelled for the final line.
The work’s creation connected several figures from the world of contemporary classical music and philanthropy. Sir James MacMillan composed “Angels Unawares,” and he worked from texts by Robert Willis, the former Dean of Canterbury, who died in late 2024. John Studzinski, a financier and philanthropist, said his Genesis Foundation commissioned the composition and described how Willis’s texts shaped MacMillan’s confidence as the project progressed.
Studzinski told The Associated Press that he wanted a major musical work “for the holy angels, which had never been written before,” and he credited Willis with writing texts that, in MacMillan’s view, did not require altering. He added that the result could “live forever,” reflecting what he described as emotional and powerful aspects of angels as messengers, mentors, warriors and motivators.
The event also brought prominent public figures into the chapel, including Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney and the UK’s former Prime Minister Theresa May, as well as other guests including Alison Clarkson, a state senator from Vermont. Clarkson said afterward that it was “sort of the unification of the glory of two of the greatest artistic expressions, music and painting,” describing the setting and the performance together.
Nichols said the concert’s subject—angels—was broadly understood across faiths, and he said exploring their “presence and the power of angelic presence in our lives” would “touch many people’s hearts and souls.” He also pointed to English as a key factor in reach, saying in remarks to the AP that “Many, many people take to English and can grasp it,” and noting that English is the most commonly spoken language in the world; last year’s conclave elected Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope.
The Genesis Foundation said the concert was recorded and will be aired on BBC radio next week, and the choice of English-language scripture texts was presented as central to that planned broadcast. Julie Cooper, a soprano, said the choir is used to singing in Latin but that it was “wonderful to do these texts in English” to bring the stories alive and communicate them to listeners. Wingless angels visible in Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” were seen only on a cloth screen behind which restorers were working to remove a white film of salt that has accumulated on the painting over the last three decades.