The Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and the Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi release a new recording of Jephté, a biblical operatic masterpiece by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair.

A work composed by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, an emblematic composer of the first half of the eighteenth century, Jephté is the only French opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be based on Holy Scripture.

On a libretto by Father Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, Jephté draws its story from the Book of Judges: after a long exile, Jephté (Tassis Christoyannis) returns to his lands and goes into battle against Ammon (Zachary Wilder) and his warriors, to save the Holy Land. He vows to sacrifice the first person he meets on his return, before seeing his wife Almasie (Judith van Wanroij) and daughter Iphise (Chantal Santon Jeffery) again.

Instrumental colouring, harmonic audacity, choral verve and choreographic pomp are put at the service of this powerful work that left its mark on contemporaries. – Rameau himself is said to have had the revelation of opera when he heard it: a year after the performances of Jephté (1732), Hippolyte et Aricie was performed at the Royal Academy (1733).

Jephthé was performed many times until the early 1760s; three successive editions plot its history (1732, 1733 and 1737, the year of the author’s death). The CMBV has retained the third version, which Montéclair himself considered to be the most accomplished. On the occasion of a concert given in March 2019 at the Palace of Arts in Budapest, the CMBV produced this modern edition of an emblematic score from the reign of Louis XV, now available to music lovers, researchers and musicians.

This disc is a continuation of the Franco-Hungarian cooperation between the CMBV and György Vashegyi, initiated in 2014, which has led notably to the recreation and recording of Rameau’s Fêtes de Polymnie, Naïs, Les Indes galantes and Dardanus, as well as Grands Motets and Isbé de Mondonville, and more recently Gervais' rare Hypermnestre.