Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Berlioz: L'Enfance du Christ

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host, Keith Brown, writes:

On this last Sunday in Advent you get to hear how a composer of the Romantic period reinterpreted the body of traditional material associated with the Christmas story. Hector Berlioz looked back with nostalgia to the music of olden times in crafting his "Sacred Trilogy", L'Enfance du Christ (1854). Berlioz did not, however, slip into a pseudo-archaic musical style in telling his tale of the babyhood of Jesus. He decided not to imitate the past. Rather, he wholly reinvented it through the bold orchestral tone painting for which he had become famous. The choruses of L'Enfance du Christ possess particular charm. This work is a sacred cantata or perhaps a small triptych of an oratorio.

I first aired it on December 29,1991 on Denon CD's with Eliahu Inbal leading the musical forces in a 1989 radio production for Hessian Radio of West Germany. Then on Christmas Sunday, 2005 came the Hyperion CD's presenting a very British and more operatic treatment of "The Infancy of Christ" with Matthew Best directing the Corydon Orchestra and Singers, plus the boy choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. That 1995 Hyperion release has been superceded by one under the Swedish Linn Records label. Again, this is a radio production of the cantata. Robin Ricciati directs the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir. French tenor Yann Beuron is the narrator, Mary is French soprano Veronique Gens and the "Father of the Family" is British bass/baritone Alastair Miles. The Linn recording was made in Stockholm in December of 2012 in co-production with Swedish Radio, and came out the following year on two compact discs. My presentation of L'Enfance du Christ will begin at approximately 2:00 PM so as to accommodate the broadcast of a women's basketball game.