Three other great recordings

Philippe Herreweghe (conductor)

Recorded with the Orchestre des Champs-élysées in 1997, Herreweghe’s approach also offers a reminder that Berlioz was a great opera composer, instilling his diverse scenes with a purposeful sense of development and constantly observant of the score’s smaller points, in which the choral contributions are perfectly scaled. Paul Agnew savours the Narrator’s text while Laurent Naouri provides a psychologically probing Herod. Véronique Gens’s Mary is tender and gentle, and Olivier Lallouette’s Joseph exhibits a real sense of desperation when rejected by the citizens of Sais. (Harmonia Mundi HMG 501632/33)

Matthew Best (conductor)

Though some may find the acoustic over-resonant, Matthew Best’s 1994 performance with the Corydon Singers and Orchestra maintains a sense of drama without tipping over into the overly theatrical. Alastair

Miles is a grand-scale Herod and

Jean Rigby’s Mary conveys maternal warmth and suggests real anxiety when she and Gerald Finley’s perfectly matched Joseph find themselves

unwelcome refugees in Egypt, where Gwynne Howell’s vocal largesse as the Ishmaelite Father embodies his generosity of spirit. (Hyperion CDD22067) Roger Norrington (conductor) In this 2002 recording, Norrington and his Stuttgart forces capture the atmosphere of every scene, and shape the score with insight and tenderness. Mark Padmore is the plangent-toned, interpretatively concentrated Narrator, with Christiane Oelze a limpid, fleshyvoiced Mary, Christopher Maltman a fluent and lyrical Joseph, and Ralf Lukas an almost melancholy Herod – viewed, as it were, from the inside out. The result is a consistently characterful performance. (Hänssler HAEN93091)

And one to avoid…

Sylvain Cambreling’s 2009 recording again employs

Yann Beuron as his Narrator, though the remaining soloists are not in the same league: Jane Henschel’s heavyweight Mary is relentless, while the Joseph is woolly, the Father sometimes unsteady, and the Herod inclined to blowsiness. Nor is the Belgian conductor as pictorially vivid as his colleagues in painting the atmosphere of individual scenes, while overall rhythmic control and precision of ensemble are both less consistent.