Presto Recording of the Week
28th June 2024

BBC Music Magazine
August 2024
Opera Choice

Gramophone Magazine
September 2024
Editor's Choice

John Osborn (Jean de Leyde), Elizabeth DeShong (Fidès), Mané Galoyan (Berthe), Edwin Crossley-Mercer (Count Oberthal)

London Symphony Orchestra, Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, Maîtrise des Bouches-du-Rhône, Lyon Opera Chorus, Sir Mark Elder

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