Three Romes concerts in Rome, Moscow, and Constantinople

Moscow, March 3 (Interfax) – The Three Romes international project will be carried out this spring by joint efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

"The action involves three most important for Christian culture geographical centers – Moscow, Istanbul and Rome," director of the Moscow Synodal Choir and Russia's honored artist Alexey Puzakov.

The Russian National Orchestra led by Mikhail Pletnev and the Moscow Synodal Choir are the main participants in the project.

A concert of Russian music will take place on May 20 in the renowned Vatican Paul VI Audience Hall, which can house up to five thousand people. Music composed by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk will be performed. Pope Benedict XVI of Rome, hierarchs and representatives of the Catholic Church and other Christian confessions are expected to visit the event.

The Vatican evening will take place after concerts in Moscow (on March 25, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior) and Istanbul (March 26, Agia Eirini museum-church.) In these cities, the Russian National Orchestra and the Moscow Synodal Choir will perform Metropolitan Hilarion's St. Mathew Passions oratorio.

"Such sequence of three concerts will stress succession of Christian culture from Moscow ("the third Rome") to the first Rome," the interviewee of the agency said.

He reminded that the idea of such a large scale and important cultural project had appeared last autumn at Metropolitan Hilarion's meeting with Benedict XVI.