Charpentier, M-A - Judith sive Bethulia liberata - Schneebeli, Olivier

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Les Pages, les Chantres & les Symphonistes du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles
Olivier Schneebeli, conductor
Dagmar Sasková, soprano
Erwin Aros, countertenor
Jean-François Novelli, tenor
Arnaud Richard, baritone

The Grand Siècle in France was a period exceptionally favourable to the renewal of the forms of sacred music and their sources of inspiration, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) is undoubtedly the finest example of this process. His Histoires sacrées, stimulated by his years of training in Rome, represent a vast 'sacred theatre', deploying unprecedented vocal and instrumental invention to portray the major episodes of the Old and New Testaments with special emphasis on their dramatic and psychological mainsprings. From Judith freeing the people of Israel from the yoke of Holofernes to the Massacre of the Innocents with its depiction of the countless cruel deeds of Herod, here is an admirable synthesis of Italian chiaroscuro and the radiant grace of the French Baroque.