In the Greek myth as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the hunter Actaeon accidentally discovers Diana bathing with her attendants. In a fury the goddess transforms him into a stag, ensuring that he will be torn apart by his own hounds. Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s miniature opera Actéon was probably written in Paris in the spring of 1684, and with its intense, dramatic and poignant music is the counterpart of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, written a few years later.

Charpentier is traditionally said to have studied in Rome with Giacomo Carissimi, so it is appropriate that we pair Actéonwith Carissimi’s great oratorio Jephte, written around 1650, in which the Israelite hero rashly promises the Lord that, in return for victory over the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first person to greet him on this return. The victim, his only daughter, sings a moving lament, echoed by the famous final chorus.

The concert also includes two miniature masterpieces by Monteverdi, the ballet ‘Movete’, probably written to celebrate the coronation of the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III in 1636, and the poignant ‘Lamento della Ninfa’, published in 1638.

Philippa Hyde and Claire Tomlin have been mainstays of the festival for many years, while Daniel Auchincloss has also appeared a number of times, most recently singing the role of the Evangelist in C.P.E. Bach’s St Matthew Passion to great acclaim.