Opera Atelier’s fall offering is Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée. It’s rather curious that such a rarely performed work should have had two productions in Toronto within a few months but there you go! It’s also a work that was conceived on quite a small scale. At the time of composition Lully had a monopoly on presenting opera in theatres in Paris so Charpentier’s work was written for the Duchesse de Guise and presented in private performance.