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Legros, haute-contre de Gluck

Reinoud Van Mechelen

Classical - Released September 22, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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Cadmus & Hermione

Vincent Dumestre

Classical - Released May 1, 2021 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Jean-Baptiste Lully's Cadmus & Hermione of 1673 was arguably the first true French opera, telling a tragic story (Lully and his librettist Philippe Quinault called it a tragédie en lyrique), employing Italian-style recitatives, and collecting the varied music and dance forms of Louis XIV's opulent court into a coherent narrative that at once celebrated Louis (he is conflated with Cadmus of Thebes) and moved beyond the ceremonial nature of earlier French dramatic music. It's a sprawling work, with five acts, an overture, and a sizable Prologue with its own overture; highlights include a dragon that eats Africans, a monster snake, and a full complement of Greek gods and goddesses. Realization of the work has, until now, been beyond the means of early music performance groups, and this is the world premiere recording of the opera, made in 2019 and based on a 2008 performance at Versailles Palace by some of the same performers. The leader is Vincent Dumestre, conducting the Le Poème Harmonique orchestra and the vocal ensembles Aedes. The forces are large enough to capture the splendor of the music (thankfully, no one-voice-per-part techniques here), and Dumestre is alert to the huge variety of musical devices Lully brings to bear on his story; there are dances, big choruses, bagpipes, and much more. Cadmus & Hermione may be a difficult work to bring to life for modern audiences, but Dumestre keeps things moving along and probably comes as close as anyone could. Of course, anyone interested in the life of the French court in the 17th century will find this an essential acquisition that will keep giving and giving. © TiVo
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Jean-Baptiste Lully : Amadis (Édition 5.1)

Christophe Rousset

Opera - Released September 22, 2014 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama - Diamant d'Opéra - Choc de Classica
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Psyché

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Écho & Narcisse

Hervé Niquet

Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Jean-Baptiste Lully : Amadis

Christophe Rousset

Opera - Released September 22, 2014 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama - Diamant d'Opéra - Choc de Classica - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
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Salieri : Tarare

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released June 7, 2019 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - Gramophone Editor's Choice - Choc de Classica
While Mozart was largely overlooked in the French capital, Antonio Salieri took on the reigns of the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera), a fruitful collaboration that was completely broken up by the French Revolution. After the success of his work Les Danaïdes, composed for Paris in 1784, Salieri worked tirelessly with Beaumarchais, spurred on by the success and scandal of his Figaro, on a new project which would become Tarare. Beaumarchais moved himself shamelessly toward stardom, skillfully self-promoting and attending rehearsals so as to assure that the orchestra played pianissimo to emphasize the primacy of his verse during performances. Beaumarchais found that the music was too overwhelming to “embellish the lyrics”.Created one year after Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (which was relatively well-received in Vienna before triumphing in Prague), Tarare was an immense success in Paris maintaining the status of the composer’s repertoire despite the political turmoil of the time before disappearing from view around 1826, thereon ceasing to be played. Beaumarchais’ words were immediately adapted into Italian by Lorenzo Da Ponte to be performed and met with equal success in Vienna. Tarare is half lyrical tragedy, half comic opera with a hint of orientalism.After resuscitating Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Christophe Rousset finished off his series of recordings dedicated to Salieri’s French operas for the Parisian public. Tarare is very much of its time, that of the Lumières, and used the power of art to challenge despotism in all its forms. Thanks to Christophe Rousset’s excellent delivery and lively direction, this recording enables one to judge the merits of the composition and the chasm that separates an honest and talented musician from a solitary and impassioned one like Mozart. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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André Cardinal Destouches : Callirhoe [Opera]

Hervé Niquet

Full Operas - Released January 1, 2006 | Glossa

André Cardinal Destouches (1672-1749) is virtually unknown today, but he was the preeminent composer of French opera in the half century between the end of Lully's career and the beginning of Rameau's. On the basis of this fine recording of Callirhoé, considered one of his most important operas, the neglect is difficult to understand. Its strength lies not so much in its originality -- it basically develops the conventions established by Lully -- but in the music's ability to illuminate the drama. Destouches was clearly a master of music for the theater; his scenes build with power and inexorability, and his dramatic confrontations, in particular, are vividly expressed. The conclusion of the second act, for example, depicting the priests of Bacchus going on a rampage, has a wildness and energy one usually associates not so much with the Baroque as with the heat of the Romantic era. The starkness of the opera's finale, which abruptly ends with a character's suicide, is brilliant theater, but entirely out of character with the conventions of the time, which would have required a tidy denouement, and most likely, the intervention of a deity. The first, 1712 version of Callirhoé, in fact, had just such an ending, but the composer revised the opera extensively for revivals in 1731 and 1743, and wisely rethought the finale, hugely increasing its effectiveness. Destouches' vocal writing is expressive and gratifyingly lyrical, and even his recitatives have emotional power. His orchestration is notably varied and colorful. The recording is the result of the commitment and passion of Hervé Niquet, director of Le Concert Spirituel, which he leads in this outstanding performance. The orchestra and chorus perform with energy and finesse, and the climaxes are thrillingly urgent. The soloists, none of whom are international stars, sound like they ought to be, singing with unfailing purity, idiomatic security, and dramatic intensity. Glossa's exemplary sound is full, warm, and spacious, with excellent balance. Callirhoé should be of strong interest to any fan of Baroque opera, and a reminder of the wealth of strong repertoire that has yet to achieve broad exposure. © TiVo
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Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Céphale et Procris

Reinoud Van Mechelen

Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
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Machaut: The Fount of Grace

Orlando Consort

Classical - Released July 7, 2023 | Hyperion

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Rameau : Zaïs

Christophe Rousset

Full Operas - Released September 3, 2015 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - Choc de Classica - Choc Classica de l'année
In 1745, the King of France granted Jean-Philippe Rameau the title of ‘Composer to the Court’, coupled with a healthy pension. This new period produced pieces of a much lighter character, with Rameau working alongside the librettist Louis de Cahusac, and the resulting collaborations are now counted amongst the Burgundian musician’s greatest masterpieces. Zaïs was presented on the stage of the Royal Academy of Music in 1748. This heroic ballet offers French music some of its most beautiful movements, both vocally and instrumentally. The entire work is a meditation on its famous opening chaos, and succeeds, surprisingly, through its theatrical stamp and in the audacity of the writing. The plot is, perhaps, tenuous – a lover (Zaïs) is in the throes of affection for his beloved (Zélidie), determining to cherish her – which serves as the pretext for endless entertainment, dancing, and the work’s magical character. Today, it remains surprising that a work as sumptuous as Rameau’s Zaïs is neglected in favour of the Indes Galantes or Hippolyte et Aricie. It is paradoxical, then, that in 1970 Gustav would combine the small amount of French music he truly appreciated with a reassessment of the beauties of this work. Gustav created a fascinating recording with La Petite Bande Sigiswald Kuijken (STIL), which has now become a true rarity, despite its questionable vocalists. Happily for us, Christophe Rousset, who cherishes Rameaus’s older work, has dedicated himself to it, and offers us this gorgeously captured rendition, with French singers working under the direction of his sharp and witty leadership. The opening of the Les Talens Lyriques recital is far more vivid than anything that has been achieved in over twenty years for L’Oiseau-Lyre, in which the Ouverture immediately sets the tone. Rousset completely captures the brilliance of the score, and his imagination – which here seems insatiable – liberates his singers, who are boundlessly invested in this work; complicit in a musical resurrection. An enchantment of sorts? No. A whirlwind, rather. © Qobuz
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Bijoux perdus

Jodie Devos

Classical - Released September 16, 2022 | Alpha Classics

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica
After her triumph with the album "Offenbach Colorature", Jodie Devos has chosen to follow in the footsteps of one of her compatriots, the Belgian coloratura soprano Marie Cabel (1827 -1885), who at the age of twenty-six scored a phenomenal success in Adolphe Adam’s opéra-comique Le Bijou perdu, which she premiered in Paris. She then took on a more dramatic role in Halévy’s Jaguarita l’Indienne, whose great Invocation with chorus ("À moi ma cohorte!") again hit the bullseye in a run of 124 performances over just a few months. Cabel enjoyed one hit after another, in Auber’s Manon Lescaut and La Part du diable, Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord and Le Pardon de Ploërmel, Victor Massé’s Galathée, and Le Songe d’une nuit d’été by Ambroise Thomas, who in 1866 gave her the biggest role of her career: Philine in Mignon, based on Goethe. In partnership with the musicologists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, who have resurrected and edited all these unjustly forgotten rarities, and Pierre Bleuse conducting the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir, Jodie Devos pays tribute to this star of the nineteenth century, whose audacity and sense of mischief she undoubtedly shares! © Alpha Classics
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Bizet: Djamileh

Münchner Rundfunkorchester

Opera - Released January 1, 2016 | Orfeo

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Lully: Armide

Les Talens Lyriques

Classical - Released March 24, 2017 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama - Gramophone Editor's Choice
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Oh, ma belle brunette

A Nocte Temporis - Reinoud Van Mechelen

Classical - Released May 27, 2022 | Alpha Classics

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The term "brunette" refers not only to a young woman with brown hair, but also to a musical form that was highly fashionable from the late seventeenth century to the early eighteenth. The genre evolved from the air de cour, extremely popular in France since the beginning of the seventeenth century. The compositional process, however, remained very similar: to write a short, tender song, dealing with themes of love or nature, which could be sung alone or accompanied by a harmonic instrument. The late seventeenth century also saw the appearance of an instrument that soon became a favourite of composers and amateur musicians: the German flute, now called the traverso or Baroque flute. In this new programme, tenor Reinoud van Mechelen, flautist Anna Besson and A nocte temporis present an anthology of airs and brunettes ranging from the most touching song to the heartiest drinking song (air à boire). © Alpha Classics
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Kaija Saariaho: 70 Years

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Classical - Released January 6, 2023 | Ondine

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Memory

Hélène Grimaud

Solo Piano - Released September 21, 2018 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Music has been described as a way of saving that which has been lost: a simple but strong idea, and one which has influenced Hélène Grimaud's artistic expression.Her new album Memory deals with music's power to bring back to life the images of the past in the present, its ability to vividly and piercingly evoke a specific time and a place. It explores the essence of memory through a series of refined miniatures for piano. The choice of repertoire covers a vast, diverse range, from the reveries of Chopin and Debussy to the timeless, folky melodies of Valentin Silvestrov.  © Universal
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Atys

Christophe Rousset

Opera - Released January 5, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Backed by the Sun King despite a lukewarm audience reception at first, Lully's Atys (1676) went on to become one of the composer's most successful operas, with revivals at French court theaters as late as 1753. In modern times, however, it is a considerably rarer item due to the massive forces and time required. Christophe Rousset was in the pit as harpsichordist when conductor William Christie gave the first modern revival of the work in the late '80s. That experience marks this 2024 release, which made classical best-seller lists at the beginning of that year. That is not common for a hefty five-act Baroque opera, but even a bit of sampling will confirm why it happened: Rousset, from the keyboard, brings tremendous energy to the opera. He pushes the tempo in the numerous dances and entrance numbers, and the musicians of Les Talens Lyriques and the singers of the Choeur du Chambre de Namur, all of whom have worked closely with Rousset in the past, keep right up. The singers in the solo roles are all fine; haut-contre Reinoud Van Mechelen in the title role and Ambroisine Bré as the goddess Cybèle, who sets the tragic plot in motion, are standouts. The sound from the increasingly engineering-expert Château de Versailles label is exceptionally clear in complex textures, and the sensuous cover art (representing, it is true, not the Roman mythological figure of Atys but Hippomène and Atalante) is a bonus. In the end, this is Rousset's Atys, and that is a very good thing.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Mademoiselle Duval: Les Génies ou les Caractères de l'Amour

Camille Delaforge

Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Michel Jonasz Quartet en concert

Michel Jonasz

French Music - Released October 21, 2022 | MJM - ADA France