David Mitchell's Christmas Cantata is a 100-minute-long contemporary oratorio for Advent, Christmas or Epiphany. Its musical language is a fusion of choral pop, jazz, and lounge music, with shades of plainsong, Renaissance opera, and Persian classical music. Though intentionally popular in idiom, it stands consciously in the great tradition of western European sacred oratorio.
It's all about voices: choruses, solos, duets, trios, quartets, octets, recitatives. It needs a good, keen chorus who can sing the notes, and soloists who can be a little freer in their delivery.
The singers...