Jonah and the Scale: Why Bible stories work as 'mini operas' - Scotsman

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Source link: https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/music/jonah-and-the-scale-why-bible-stories-work-so-well-as-mini-operas-8647151
Published by: SCOTSMAN on 28 May 2026
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Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. In the Belly of the Beast began, like many good stories, far away and long ago. The tales it

tells started life in the Old Testament, before travelling through early 18th-century France, on their way to be with us in the 21st Century.

The baroque composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre took already ancient and familiar stories - Adam, Jonah, and Jephthah (the last maybe a little less well known now) - and set them as intimate dramas for female voices and a handful of instruments. In her day, they would have been performed for small audiences, in salons or at court. These Cantates Bibliques are detailed, psychologically precise mini operas: oddly compact, like little worlds you can hold in your hands. 

When I first encountered them, I was surprised by how unsentimental they are [...]

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