Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Charpentier: David et Jonathas

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The influence of the Italian immigrant composer Jean Baptiste Lully upon the Royal French Court was so strong that no native French composer in the reign of Louis XIV could get an opera performed before the king. Only after Lully died in 1687 did the field become open again for native talent. Marc Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) wrote a Lullian-style opera on a Biblical subject for performance at the Jesuit College in Paris, where he was musical director. This was David et Jonathas (1688), which was intended as a special Lenten entertainment. It is the only surviving example of a "sacred lyric tragedy" from the era of the Sun King.

The one existing copy of the score of David et Jonathas is corrupt, with a lot of transcription mistakes and actual gaps running into many bars of music. Michel Corboz, a pioneer in the authentic recreation of baroque music, painstakingly reconstructed the complete score for a staged revival by Opera de Lyon in 1981. Corboz conducts the English Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra and singing cast, as recorded for the French Erato record label. David et Jonathas I have featured twice before at Lent: on Sunday, March 14, 1993 and again on the 13th of March, 2011.