Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Charpentier went to Italy as a young man and absorbed Giacomo Carissimi's style so deeply he became the only French composer of his generation to write true oratorios. By 1670 he was composing for the Duchess of Guise; when Lully's monopoly squeezed out rivals, Molière hired him to score The Imaginary Invalid and other plays. His 1690 opera Médée failed badly enough that he turned wholly to sacred music afterward, serving convents and abbeys across Paris until 1698, when he became music master at the Sainte-Chapelle. He left behind twenty-eight volumes in his own hand — over 500 works he'd cat…