Orlando di Lasso, Orlande de Lassus, or whatever one’s linguistic preference is, was one of the most influential composers of the High Renaissance. Nowadays, his name is likely to feature more prominently in histories of 16th-century music than in concert programmes. But Lasso’s final masterpiece, Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St Peter), is Peter Sellars’ choice for his first venture into staging an a cappella work, following on from his concert-hall productions of the Bach passions and a Stravinsky double bill of Symphony of Psalms and Oedipus Rex.

Completed in 1594 just a few weeks before Lasso’s death, the Lagrime is a cycle of 20 spiritual madrigals and a final motet based on stanzas by the poet Tansillo exploring the role of the apostle Peter in the passion story. Intended for meditation rather than worship, they are seven-part settings following a strict modal and numerical pattern, but without a clear narrative thread between them.

Sellars’ bare-stage production for the Los Angeles Master Chorale and its conductor Grant Gershon doesn’t attempt to impose any narrative on the sequence. Rather it seems to respond to the words of each number in a piecemeal, sometimes almost naive way, having the singers cover their eyes or ears when seeing or hearing is mentioned, merging them into a tight, jostling group to signify a vicious crowd, or having them lie on the ground at any mention of sleep or death.

It’s all worked out to the last detail, and the Chorale’s performances (singing entirely from memory) are impressively immaculate, if rather over-moulded, and sometimes self-consciously expressive. What it all adds to the grave, austere beauty of Lasso’s originals, I’m not at all sure.

•At the Sage, Gateshead, on 25 May.