La Serenissima is recognised as the UK’s leading exponent of the music of eighteenth-century Venice and connected composers. Uniquely, the group’s entire repertoire is edited from source material, and it has been praised for its ‘glorious and all-too-rare ability to make one’s pulse race afresh with every new project’ (Gramophone). La Serenissima has become synonymous with virtuosity, dynamism and accessibility, uncovering a plethora of new repertoire and making it available to all through live performance, high calibre recording work, education and outreach initiatives.

Since the first album was released in 2003, La Serenissima’s recordings have been applauded by numerous publications and have attracted multiple awards, besides being chosen to feature in international advertising (Versace, 2018) and film (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2020). In 2010, The French Connection won the Gramophone Award for ‘Baroque Instrumental’. The Four Seasons was released in 2015, spending several weeks in the UK Specialist Classical Chart and selected as Editor’s Choice (Gramophone) and Concerto Choice (BBC Music Magazine). In 2017, The Italian Job won a further Gramophone Award. The ensemble’s album Vivaldi x2 topped the UK Classical Chart upon release in 2018, with The Sunday Times writing that ‘under Adrian Chandler, the playing, vibrant yet polished to perfection, is superb.’ Most recently, La Serenissima’s album Extra Time has received exhaustive radio play from all major UK radio stations and clocked up over 250,000 streams in the first 2 weeks of release, with Gramophone remarking that ‘the music-making is top-drawer and joyous’.

La Serenissima has performed throughout the UK and internationally in both urban and rural venues: many projects have reached new audiences through project funding from Arts Council England. In 2018 it gave the first modern performance of Brescianello’s opera Tisbe for the Buxton Festival. In 2019 La Serenissima opened the London Festival of Baroque music, debuted at the Snape Proms and gave the modern premiere of Caldara’s opera Lucio Papirio Dittatore in Buxton; they also launched a new animateur-led outreach programme for key-stage 2 children as part of The Godfather tour.