Portrait of Monteverdi by Bernardo Strozzi

IMAGINE  if you can, amid the grey depths of a British winter, the dazzle of a great Italian city, Mantua, in all its 17th-century splendour. And no, this isn’t an ad for easyJet, but an invitation to time-travel that Hampstead Parish Church offers next Sunday, Dec 14, when it stages one of the great sonic spectacles of Renaissance music, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610.

As Geoffrey Webber, HPC’s director of music puts it, the Vespers are “The big choral/orchestral masterpiece before Bach and Handel come along.” And though they blaze with Latin fire, they also carry a certain mystery, because no one knows when they were first performed as a whole – or, indeed, whether Monteverdi ever intended them to be done as a whole.

“They’re a bit like a DIY kit,” says Webber, “with component parts – psalm settings, motets, instrumental music – from which you can assemble a rather grand event. And because there are so many choices you have to make, no two performances are quite the same.”

But one invariable is impact, which they have to spare. And when HPC does them at 7pm, as a concert, they’ll have not only the professional voices of the resident choir there, but a period-style orchestra trying to recreate how they might have sounded when Monteverdi wrote them – back in 1610 when he was working for the rich and powerful Gonzaga family in Mantua.

“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for ages”, says Webber, who has been at HPC for five years now, having previously run the music at Caius College, Cambridge, “but it’s such a major undertaking, we needed a special occasion.”

And the occasion is the 50th anniversary of Hampstead Church Music Trust, an organisation that supports music not only at HPC but in other places of worship within the borough. Funded by donations, it’s a lifeline for churches that couldn’t otherwise afford to keep their music going. So worth celebration. Check the website, hcmt.org.uk, which explains all and has details of the Vespers event. Guaranteed to blast away the winter gloom.

Hampstead Parish Church, Church Row, NW3. Tickets £20, £15 concs. Book online at fom.org.uk or on the door. Tel: 020 7794 5808

• Almost everything else this week is seasonably choral, notably at Smith Square whose annual Christmas Festival is under way. A marketplace for the best in the business, it includes Voces 8 (Dec 12), the magnificent mixed-voices of Clare College Cambridge (Dec 13), the Gesualdo Six (Dec 17), Queens College Oxford (Dec 19), the Tallis Scholars (Dec 20)… it runs on. sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk

And if that’s not enough supercharged singing, there are two outstanding Messiahs this week – from the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican, Dec 15 (barbican.org.uk), and the Monteverdi Choir at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Dec 16, with Christophe Rousset standing in for the gone but still-missed ghost at the feast, John Eliot Gardiner (stmartin-in-the-fields.org).

For good measure, St John’s Cambridge are at Wigmore Hall, Dec15 (wigmore-hall.org.uk). The Sixteen are at Cadogan Hall, Dec 17 & 18 (cadoganhall.com). And Britten’s deathless Ceremony of Carols plays at the Temple Church, Dec 18 (templemusic.org).

• Stepping aside from Christmas, the Royal Opera revives its circus-style Turandot for the umpteenth time – the bait here being Anna Netrebko in the first four performances, though you’ll be lucky to catch her because they’re sold out. Other sopranos with heft see the run through to Jan 30. rbo.org.uk