Charpentier: David and Jonathan
New Sussex Opera, Bellot Ensemble, Toby Purser
Theatre Royal, Winchester. 25 October 2026
New Sussex Opera and the Bellot Ensemble completed a short South-East England tour of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan with a performance in the Theatre Royal, Winchester, on World Opera Day. This follows their 2024 tour of The Dragon of Wantley, reviewed here. The first performance of David et Jonathas was at the Jesuit Collège of Louis-le-Grand, Paris in February 1688 when it was performed together with the play, Saul, with each of the five Acts of the Charpentier’s tragédie en musique interspersed with sections of the play. A huge success at the time, it was reprised at several other Jesuit colleges over the following 50 years, but was then more or less forgotten until recent times. New Sussex Opera is a community opera company based in Lewis, the community providing the chorus and various subsidiary solo roles in this production and, presumably, also helping to raise the funds for touring performances like this. Some of those funds went towards engaging the Bellot Ensemble, currently Radio 3 New Generation Baroque Ensemble and the six principal soloists for this production: Harun Ellis Tekin, David, Tom Lilburn, Jonathan, Massimo Modoni, Saul, Daniel Chomiak, Achis/Samuel, Nadiia Chaichenko, Pythoness, and Ambrose Chiu, Joabel.
