In the Belly of the Beast
In the Belly of the Beast: a radical staging of Jacquet de la Guerre’s Biblical cantatas tours the UK this summer
A new co-production from acclaimed collaborators - Hera, Mahogany Opera and Dunedin Consort
This month Hera, Mahogany Opera and Dunedin Consort come together again following their success with Out of her Mouth in 2023, to unveil In the Belly of the Beast, a fiercely contemporary reimagining of three Baroque cantatas by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.
Running from 19 June to 4 July across Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, London’s Spitalfields Festival, Rosehill in Cumbria and the Aldeburgh Festival, the one-hour production invites audiences into a world where ancient myths collide with the crises of the present day.
At the centre of the production is soprano Carolyn Sampsonwhose roles include God, joined by Portuguese soprano Mariana Rodrigues, discovered through a UK-wide open call. With musicians from Dunedin Consort, the one-hour show harnesses the intimacy of Baroque chamber music while amplifying its emotional and symbolic scale through striking theatrical design led by director Jennifer Fletcher, lighting & projection designer Ben Moon, and set & costume designer Ingrid Hu. With a new English libretto by Hera’s co-director ToriaBanks, the result is a work that feels both centuries old and urgently now.
In the Belly of the Beast revisits three stories - Adam, Jonah and Jephthah - traditionally used to reinforce obedience, sacrifice and patriarchal authority. Here they become portraits of people grappling with the arbitrary nature of power, and men trying to bargain with the divine and finding their deals unravel.
Jacquet de la Guerre’s rarely performed Biblical cantatas, written in early 18th-century France, offer unusually muscular storytelling for their time. Banks’ translation brings a sharpened modernity to the original texts by Houdar de la Motte, revealing their flashes of irony and startling humanity.
The three cantatas unfold as a triptych. In Adam, the Fall of Man is told without Eve - an unsettling reframing that re-alerts us to the strangeness of the myth, and to the cruelty of God’s behaviour. Jonah places the audience inside the escalating terror of a storm at sea and, ultimately, inside the symbolic refuge of whale itself. In Jephthah, the only cantata Jacquet de la Guerre wrote for two women’s voices, a wife and daughter celebrate a military victory only to realise the cost of the oath the returning general has made. Their grief echoes outwards to the mountains, forests and skies, implicating all creation in the consequences of violence.
Fletcher, Moon and Hu’s staging, built around the use of light and shadow allows the scale to rapidly shift, opening up the cantatas into a world where ancient stories feel disquietingly close to our own headlines: the fragility of borders, the refugee crisis, creeping authoritarianism, and the hollow promises of patriarchal authority.
In the Belly of the Beast promises another bold encounter: a journey into the belly of myth, masculinity and divine power, illuminated by one of Europe’s great women composers and reimagined for an uncertain 21st century.
LISTINGS INFORMATION :
In the Belly of the Beast
A co-production by Hera, Mahogany Opera and Dunedin Consort
Music: Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre
New English libretto: Toria Banks
Director: Jennifer Fletcher
Designers: Ben Moon (lighting & projection), Ingrid Hu (set & costume)
Singers: Carolyn Sampson, Mariana Rodrigues
Duration: 60 mins
With English captioning
TOUR DATES
19 June 2026, 7.30pm - Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh https://www.thequeenshall.net/
25 June 2026, 7pm - Britten Studio, Snape Maltings (part of Aldeburgh Festival, sold out)
27 June 2026, 4.30 & 7.30pm - Metronome London (part of Spitalfields Festival; on sale to members 30 March, general public 1 April)
2 July 2026, 7.30pm - Joan Knight Studio, Perth Theatre & Concert Hall https://www.perththeatreandconcerthall.com/whats-on/dunedin-consort-in-the-belly-of-the-beast
3 July 2026, 7.30pm - Stevenson Hall, RCS Glasgow https://www.rcs.ac.uk/whats-on/
4 July 2026, 8pm - Rosehill Theatre, Whitehaven
Photo credit: Pieter Lastman’s Jonah and the Whale. With permission from Kunstpalast - Walter Klein - ARTOTHEK