This recording is released in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Carissimi, one of the most prolific seventeenth-century Italian composers of church music, as well as one of the early masters of the oratorio. In their combination of deep religious feeling and intense dramatic realisation of the original biblical texts, both Jephte, perhaps the composer’s best-known work today, and Jonas demonstrate Carissimi’s complete understanding of the range of musical possibilities when writing for the voice.