Bach Weekend opens with a programme that features Bach’s Cantate burlesque (Peasant Cantata) alongside his Coffee Cantata, both by librettist Picander, and nothing less than comic operas.

In the Cantate burlesque, the themes of rural politics and bucolic sexuality form a heady mix within its bawdy text, while the Coffee Cantata explores the perils of addiction, and the lengths that our heroine, Lieschen, will go to secure the thing she craves most.

The performances will be part-dramatised, and there will be English surtitles to show the quick-witted repartee of Picander’s poetry in real time. Charles Daniels will complete the programme with his reading of the beautiful tenor cantata ‘Ich armer Mensch, ich Sündenknecht’.