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What did the birth of the universe sound like? Joseph Haydn offers his take in The Creation—an astonishing work of pure musical imagination. If you're craving an evening of epic music and a stage filled with Canada's finest singers and instrumentalists, this program is for you!

Witness the birth of the universe in all of its majesty and mystery in Joseph Haydn's The Creation. Weaving a collection of texts from the Book of Genesis, the Book of Psalms, and John Milton's Paradise Lost, The Creation embarks on an odyssey of cosmic proportions—in which light emerges from darkness, soil and sky take shape, and humans and animals alike discover an earthly paradise.

Music Director John Storgårds and the NAC Orchestra join forces with local choirs and a trio of stellar Canadian vocal soloists to bring to life Haydn's epic and enchanting score. For Storgårds, Haydn is a composer especially close to him—one whose music invites curiosity, offering listeners tools while leaving space to think, listen, and discover together. That spirit of creative freedom lies at the heart of how he and the orchestra approach The Creation.

"I wouldn't have believed that mere human lungs … could create such miracles," one critic wrote of The Creation's 1799 premiere. "I never left a theatre more contented, and all night I dreamed of the creation of the world."

with English and French surtitles