Sistine Chapel Choir Performs First Latin America Concert in Ipanema

Overview

• The Pontifical Sistine Chapel Choir performed at Igreja Nossa Senhora da Paz in Ipanema on Friday, giving the ensemble’s first concert in Latin America as part of its Brazil tour.
• The concert opened with Gregorian chant and included Renaissance sacred works such as Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Ave Maria, reflecting the choir’s centuries‑old liturgical repertoire.
• Monsenhor Marcos Pavan, a Brazilian who is the choir’s maestro and the first non‑Italian director in more than six centuries, conducted the 25 adult singers and 31 children and youth who live in Rome.
• Organizers distributed roughly 800 free invitations but demand exceeded capacity, producing long lines, a start about an hour late, overflow viewing in the parish hall, and a livestream by Web TV Redentor.
• The Ipanema stop fed a sequence of tour dates that already included São Paulo, Curitiba and Brasília and continued with a performance in Catete and further engagements back in São Paulo, all framed as part of the 200‑year diplomatic commemoration.