Recorded live in concert at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2023, this album sees the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Mark Elder join forces with Lyon Opera Chorus, Maîtrise des Bouches-du-Rhône, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, and an incredible cast of soloists to bring to life Meyerbeer’s visionary historical drama, Le prophète.
The opera is based on a true story. In the 1500s, a charismatic innkeeper was converted to Anabaptism by itinerant preachers. After becoming a preacher himself, he came to Münster and established a tyrannical rule, renaming it Jerusalem and proclaiming himself king, before later being killed.
Add to this a bride who is a fighter, and the most formidable mother figure ever shown on an operatic stage, and Le prophète is the quintessential grand opera—a spectacular large-scale work that made the Paris Opera the leading stage in Europe, and Meyerbeer a composer admired and envied by the greatest.
“An indisputable highlight of the festival was July 15’s concert performance of Le prophète. […] The evening was broadcast live on Radio France, but the achievement of Elder and everyone else here deserves wider currency and it would be tragic if a recording was not forthcoming”
– Opera Magazine
“This was certainly a night to remember” – OperaWire
