The Sistine Chapel choir is the choir who sings for the papal Masses at St. Peter’s Basilica and other papal ceremonies in Vatican City. Unfortunately, it’s common knowledge among musicians that while their selections of music have typically been very good (such as gregorian ordinaries and polyphonic motets), their performance of said music has, in the past, often been overly operatic and low in quality.
However, I woke up yesterday morning, and saw a notification on my phone that the Papal Music youtube channel had uploaded a new video from the Consistory in Rome, so I opened it and expected more of the same. But I opened it up and was shocked to find their quality had massively improved:
I am not sure what is going on there with their choir, but whatever is going on, their gradual improvement is going very well, and I am very interested to see where this goes in the future.
For comparison, here are a few past performances of the same piece: