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 [...]