Welcome to this digital edition of Phillip Huscher's Program Notes for upcoming concerts by the CSO Jun 21-24. "Rossini's Stabat mater is a longstanding specialty of Mr. Muti's. It moves in several directions at once: the arias are as operatic as can be, yet the two unaccompanied choruses are sublimely devotional. The music is unquestionably dramatic: not the extroverted drama of a costumed operatic pageant, but of a prayerful supplicant's interior passion" (The New York Times). Riccardo Muti leads the CSO, Chicago Symphony Chorus and internationally celebrated singers in Rossini's dramatic and thrilling Stabat mater. Lovers of opera and choral works alike will not want to miss this remarkable program that also features Mozart's Kyrie in D Minor and the haunting Chant sur la mort de Joseph Haydn by Cherubini, whom Beethoven considered the greatest of his contemporaries.