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Jephthah’s daughter was this warrior without a name; she fought for her father, the king, but she didn’t get a name.

Sir Alex Ferguson identified football’s lust for blood with reality TV and the idea that somebody must be voted off each week, but the urge perhaps lies deeper than that: Isaac, Jephthah’s daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus, Sydney Carton, Edward Woodward’s police officer in The Wicker Man – they all pre-date the X-Factor.

One relates the history of a small family soap-and-candle business, Jephthah Clare & Sons of Boston, which over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries grows into a giant worldwide conglomerate.

Giacomo Carissimi will perform “Jephte,” an oratorio that tells the Old Testament story of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter due to her father’s rash oath to God.

It depicts his sitters as though they were facing tragedy in an echo of the Biblical story of Jephthah.