Review of Belly of the Beast – a biblical scene featuring the beloved composer of the Sun King | Classical music

WWith the temperature at Shoreditch Town Hall reaching 41 degrees, the Spitalfields music festival was forced to cancel the first event of its 50th anniversary season. As a result, this concert of rare baroque cantatas, which were only sung and sung in the lead, was an unexpected opening for the festival.

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre was an actress at the court of Louis XIV. Chosen by the five-year-old Sun King, she became the first French woman to write an opera, and all her works were published and performed widely. Along with his keyboard compositions, he is best known today for his two sets of biblical cantatas. Straightforward music, it follows a repetitive and contemporary style. What makes them fertile from an interesting point of view, however, is the way the story switches back and forth from the third-person narrative to the protagonist – or at one point the antagonist – of the tale.

This partnership between Dunedin Consort, Hera and Mahogany Opera produced three of them: Adam, Jonah and Jephthah. Together with the title In the Belly of the Beast, in a loose English translation by Toria Banks, the obvious villain here was the oppressive God of the Old Testament. In Adam, divinity seemed eager to receive all the credit for his handiwork, enjoying the entrapment of his human creation (viewed through a feminine lens it is surprising that Antoine Houdar de la Motte’s text on Jacquet de La Guerre never mentions Eve). The sad Jonah was given the opportunity to teach him a lesson from God, when the daughter of Jephthah was not only the hostage of her tyrannical father but was also captured by an unrepentant god who, in this version, did not send an angel of mercy to save her at the last moment.

Jennifer Fletcher’s gentle but effective performance was accompanied by theorbo, viola da gamba and violin, while Carolyn Sampson and Mariana Rodrigues drew attention in the trio. In Adam, the shy Sampson confirmed the satirical expression in Banks’ revolutionary libretto, Rodrigues was romantically involved as she went to her death as Jephthah’s daughter. Both of them sang with awe and beauty, their fast voices combining with the mesmerizing melodies in the final cantata.