Vienna Boys Choir: Christmas in Vienna

About This Event

The Vienna Boys Choir's annual holiday stop at Symphony Center is a genuinely different register from the pop-up light shows and Santa photo-ops that dominate December in Chicago — an afternoon matinee (1:30 PM, easy to build a full day around) from one of the oldest continuously-operating musical institutions on Earth.

The choir dates to 1498, founded when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I moved his court to Vienna and brought a handful of boy choristers with him to sing for the Hofmusikkapelle's Holy Mass. Franz Schubert sang in the choir as a boy; Joseph and Michael Haydn performed with it too. The Habsburg court version was disbanded in 1920 after the empire fell, but the choir itself was re-founded as an independent organization in 1924 and has run continuously since — genuinely older than the United States by nearly 300 years.

Worth knowing: tickets start at $29, and the matinee timing means it's a genuinely different kind of December outing than an evening show — plan an early dinner after rather than before.