Beethoven’s fascination with the figure of Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods to bring light and warmth to Man, lies in Christ on the Mount of Olives as well as in the masterpiece of later that year, 1803, the Eroica Symphony. The oratorio is no masterpiece. Beethoven admitted that it was written in a hurry; this had the effect of making him turn to various ideas easily conjured up from his experience. The soldiers who march in to arrest Jesus sing here with a sturdy trudge suggesting that they have come straight offstage from an opéra comique. Peter, angrily intercepting them with remarks like ‘lass meine Rache kühlen’, is using standard Vengeance Aria parlance in words but also in the kind of music that Beethoven was about to turn to powerful ends with Pizarro.

Andreas Schmidt delivers himself of Peter’s just rage with suitable vehemence and strength. The Seraph, though wholly benign, wears coloratura clothing she has borrowed from the Queen of Night; Luba Orgonosova manages it all, even a good strong top D, with powerful effect. And who is here in the person of Jesus himself but Plácido Domingo. The part calls for a certain nobility and melancholy resignation from this Christ rather than anything close to the Agony in the Garden of the Gospels, but, as Habakuk Traber’s very intelligent booklet essay puts it, ‘as "Citizen Jesus" he becomes not only the Saviour but also a model for all humanity’, and it is the humanity rather than the divinity that Beethoven stresses. Domingo is in splendid command, and if his voice has sounded more resplendent, he takes the centre of the stage with properly heroic command. Kent Nagano directs a performance that makes a strong case for this uneven but not at all unsympathetic work.