An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece—though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. Protestant composers took their stories from the Bible, while Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints. Oratorios became extremely popular in early 17th century Italy partly because of the success of the opera and the Church's prohibition of spectacles during Lent. Oratorios became the main choice of music during that period for opera audiences.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC (born 20 April 1943, Fontmell Magna, Dorset, England) is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir (1964), the English Baroque Soloists (1975) and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (1989). Gardiner has recorded over 250 albums with these and other musical ensembles, most of which have been published by Deutsche Grammophon and Philips Classics. Gardiner is most famous for his interpretations of Baroque music on period instruments with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, but his repertoire and discography are not limited to early music. With the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique Gardiner has performed a wide range of Classical and Romantic music, including many works of Hector Berlioz and all of Beethoven's symphonies. A recording of the third symphony of the latter was used in a dramatisation by the BBC of Beethoven's writing of that symphony. Gardiner has served as chief conductor of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as guest conductor with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Vienna Philharmonic.

Jean-François Le Sueur (or Lesueur; pronounced [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa lə sɥœʁ]) (15 February 1760 – 6 October 1837) was a French composer, best known for his oratorios and operas.

He was born at Plessiel, a hamlet of Drucat near Abbeville, to a long-established family of Picardy, the great-nephew of the painter Eustache Le Sueur. Beginning as a chorister at the collegial church of Abbeville, then at the cathedral of Amiens, where he pursued his music studies, Le Sueur was named chorus master at the cathedral of Sées. He went to Paris to study harmony with the Abbé Nicolas Roze, chorus master at the Saints-Innocents. Le Sueur was named to positions at Dijon (1779), Le Mans (1782), then at Tours (1783) before he succeeded Roze at the Saints-Innocents at Paris. Finally in 1786, after a competition, he was made music director at Notre-Dame de Paris.

For the Feast of the Assumption, he innovated by introducing an orchestra, with great success, and his sacred concerts at the main feasts of the Church filled the cathedral to overflowing but incurred resistance in ecclesiastical circles. He replied by publishing a pamphlet Exposé d'une musique imitative et particulière à chaque solennité (1787). The cathedral chapter decided to reduce its musical budget in a time of financial crisis for France, which constrained Le Sueur to give up the important musical Masses that he specialised in, and to give up his position.

Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE (born 25 September 1927) is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett.

He studied as a clarinettist, but was intent on becoming a conductor. After struggles as a freelance conductor from 1949 to 1957, he gained a series of appointments with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has been associated with the London Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years, including over ten years as its principal conductor. He has also held the musical directorships of Sadler's Wells Opera and the Royal Opera House, where he was principal conductor for over fifteen years. His guest conductorships include the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Dresden Staatskapelle, among many others.

As a teacher, Davis holds posts at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Carl Maria von Weber High School of Music in Dresden. He made his first gramophone recordings in 1958, and his discography built up in the succeeding five decades is extensive, with a large number of studio recordings for Philips Records and a growing catalogue of live recordings for the London Symphony Orchestra's own label.

Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE, MA (Cantab), HonMusD (Cantab), born 10 September 1941, Nottingham, is an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer and musicologist, well known as the founder of the Academy of Ancient Music.

Hogwood studied music and classical literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He went on to study performance and conducting under Raymond Leppard and Thurston Dart; and later with Rafael Puyana and Gustav Leonhardt. He also studied in Prague with Zuzana Ruzickova for a year, under a British Council scholarship.

In 1967, Hogwood founded the Early Music Consort with David Munrow, and in 1973 he founded the Academy of Ancient Music, specializing in performances of baroque and early classical music with period instruments. The Early Music Consort was disbanded following Munrow's death in 1976, but Hogwood continued to perform and record with the Academy of Ancient Music.

Since 1981, Hogwood has conducted regularly in the United States. He served as Artistic Director of Boston's Handel and Haydn Society from 1986 to 2001, and since then has held the title of Conductor Laureate. From 1983 to 1985 Hogwood was artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in the Barbican Centre in London. From 1988 to 1992, he was musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota.