Jean-Baptiste Cardonne (1730-1792) was a French composer, harpsichordist and singer. With his father serving as a high-ranking official in the royal court, the young Jean-Baptiste started out serving as a page in the highest circles, but as a child prodigy he soon attracted attention, and thus was accepted as a student of the eminent Baroque composer Colin de Blamon. When he was 13, a motet he had written was performed in front of the king, and by age 15 he was singing in the choir of the royal chapel. In the 1750s, he sang in the chorus of the theatre of Madame de Pompadour, and in the 1760s he enjoyed the patronage of the children of Louis XV. His interest in the genre of opera developed in the late 1760s. His work Omphale is a five-act tragédie en musique, which he wrote in 1769 to a libretto by Antoine Houdar de la Motte. The work treats the love story between two famous figures from Greek mythology: Omphale, the queen of Lydia, and Heracles, the son of Zeus and Alcmene. The international soloists, consisting of sopranos Chantal Santon Jeffery and Judith Van Wanroij, from France and the Netherlands, respectively, Belgian tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen and French baritone Jérôme Boutillier have already contributed to the success of several previous productions by the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra.

A joint production of the Orfeo Music Foundation and the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles

Presented by: Sysart Kft. Orfeo Music Foundation