A pre-concert talk by Dr Shirley Thompson

Marc-Antoine Charpentier was the most original and profound French composer of the seventeenth century. This concert includes his intense six-part setting of the Miserere and the oratorio ‘Caecilia virgo et martyr’.

In the seventeenth century the bass viol was developed as a solo instrument rivalling the lute. This programme explores its unaccompanied repertoire, contrasting music by the French composers Marais, Sainte-Colombe and de Machy with the German August Kühnel and the Englishman William Young.

An illustrated talk by the Director of Opera Restor’d on Baroque opera and staging in France, Italy and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A concert performance of two delightful dramatic works inspired by French music and dance. Il ballo delle ingrate is an Italian version of the French balet de cour. Venus and Adonis, John Blow’s miniature opera written for the English court, is the model for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

This programme contrasts chansons and motets by Machaut and Dufay, and also explores the role English composers of the period played in the development of French mediaeval music.

The Baroque flute was developed in the late seventeenth century in France and much of its best repertoire comes from that country.

This programme brings together two masterpieces of the theatre repertory, the extraordinary music Jean Féry Rebel wrote for the ballet Les élémens, depicting the creation of the world, and François Couperin’s great Concert dans le goût théatral. It also includes flute concertos by Leclair and Buffardin and Rameau’s overture to Pigmalion.