Charpentier : Grand Motets for Holy Week at Versailles

About the Event

Live, if only for a few hours, as the nobles of Louis XIV's court might have. In the spectacular Royal Chapel of Versailles, Sébastien Daucé conducts Ensemble Correspondances in music for Holy Week by the greatest composer of sacred music of the French Baroque — Marc‐Antoine Charpentier.

The week leading up to Easter is perhaps the greatest musical moment in the Catholic liturgical year, with an outpouring of lyrical and harmonic depictions of and reflections on the Passion. In an era when operatic performances were banned during this period, the public rushed to convents, churches, and cathedrals to hear music such as the great Mass, the 'Jesuit Miserere', 'Motets for the Deceased' or the 'Lessons for Tenebrae'.