A decade or so ago, the French composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was barely a historical footnote; today, she’s beginning to attract attention, but live performances remain few and far between. It’s all a far cry from the status she enjoyed in France at the turn of the 18th Century: Louis XIV made her a court musician at Versailles, and she was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Paris Opera.
London is unlikely to see her operas any time soon, but with this welcome Spitalfields Festival show (for one night only, unfortunately), the avowedly feminist opera company Hera offered staged presentations of three of Jacquet’s cantatas.
