How a saint was made underneath a stairway

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The sacred opera Il Sant'Alessio, by Monteverdi's younger contemporary Stefano Landi, looks unpromising at first glance. Three hours of recitative, no women's voices (this was Rome); instead no fewer than nine counter-tenors and a story of piety taken to almost comical extremes. Alessio elects to become a mendicant and returns from a trip to the Holy Land to take up residence under a stairway in his father's palace. Concealing his identity from father, mother and fiancé, he withstands the Devil's temptations, dies and achieves sainthood for his pains.

The Church, badly needing saints, applauds the deception and misery he inflicts on family and friends.

Landi seizes his opportunities for pathos, not least in the touching music for Alessio's mother and wife, sung here by Xavier Sabata and Max Emanuel Cencic. Both are bald counter-tenors and the latter offered more than a hint of drag.

But then so did Benjamin Lazar's stylish semi-staging generally (adapted by him from a fully staged version at the Theatre de Caen), though it was none the worse for that.

Baroque gesture met camp, the humour played up in the comic scenes involving the palace pages.

Philippe Jaroussky brought dignity and pure-toned sobriety to the role of Alessio, with Alain Buet impressive as his father Eufemiano.

William Christie and the Orchestra and Chorus of Les Arts Florissants breathed life into the steadfast recitative, moulding the lines with supple expressiveness, sweeping the action forward in expertly juxtaposed scenes of pathos and comedy, high emotion and piety.

Les Arts Florissants/Christie
Barbican Hall
Barbican Hall
Silk Street
EC2