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Everyone thinks that they know Alceste by Lully, and yet this 1674 masterpiece has almost never been recorded in its entirety. Apart from the Malgoire version from 1975 with Bruce Brewer and Felicity Palmer, which is starting to become outdated, the real treat is a second versoin by the same Malgoire twenty years later with Jean-Philippe Lafont and Colette Alliot-Lugaz... And so we can only take our hats off to the new discographical opus from Christophe Rousset's Talens Lyriques, a lively and elegant reading which allows us to rediscover everything that was so innovative about this brilliant, effervescent Florentine, who would become a typical Versaillais, a courtesan and a wheeler-dealer. King Louis XIV - 36 years old, still with all his own teeth and a victorious war leader - could only feel flattered by the piece signed by Quinault: Alcide, who covets the beautiful Alceste (who has been promised to Admetus), is none other than Hercules himself - Louis XIV seeing himself in Hercules saving the beautiful Madame de Montespan from the clutches of her husband. To be sure, in this opera, Admetus/Hercules magnanimously hands Alceste, whom he has saved from hell, to her husband, while the poor Mr Montespan would end his career and his life exiled in Gascony... Honour intact. The Sun King loved the work, to the point that he commanded that rehearsals be held at Versailles. According to Madame de Sévigné, "The King declared that if he found himself in Paris when it was performed, he would go to see it every night." That being said, if Alceste suited the tastes of the court, it didn't do so well in Paris, where Lully's enemies, jealous of the extravagant privileges that he had won (the exclusive right to "have sung any whole piece in France, wither in French verse or in other languages, without the written permission of said Sir Lully, on pain of a ten thousand livre fine, and confiscation of theatres, equipment, decorations, costumes..."), heaped plot upon plot, while the gallant Mercury sang his little couplet: Dieu !  Le bel opéra ! Rien de plus pitoyable ! Cerbère y vient japper d'un aboi lamentable !  Oh ! Quelle musique de chien ! Oh ! Quelle musique du diable ! [Lord!/Fine opera!/There's nothing so pitiable!/Cerberus is yapping, his howls lamentable!/What doggish music!/What devilish music!]. Posterity would decide otherwise, and Rousset proved it triumphantly. © SM/Qobuz

The Aparté label always strives to include a rare level of precision in its librettos. The accompanying texts are brimming with precious information on the works within the programme, each historically and musicologically recontextualised. This new release is particularly educational since it contains little-known works by François Couperin, performed here by Christophe Rousset and his ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques. Accompanied by the marvellous tenor Cyrille Dubois, the musicians introduce an anthology of both serious and easily digestible arias. These predate the first publication of Couperin’s Livres de pièces pour clavecin in 1713, to which he primarily owes his fame. For music lovers, there’s also the first-ever recording of ‘Souvent dans le plus doux sort’—a stunning aria.The virtuoso Rousset, as always, is a maestro of articulation. He excels in making the harpsichord sing, whilst the roundness of Dubois’ tone offers a real sense of freshness overall. This is an exquisite release. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz

The sonata is one of the most common of all musical genres, but in France toward the end of the 17th century, with Italian styles still in official disfavor, it was barely even possible to write one. Composers were fascinated, however, by the new breezes blowing from Italy, and François Couperin began to write "sonades" even though he never published them. He later claimed to have written the first French sonatas. The seven works here are odd fusions of French and Italian styles, and they are beautifully animated by the French historical-instrument group Les Dominos and its leader, violinist Florence Malgoire. Three works, La Steinquerque (track 3), L'Astrée (track 5), and La Visionnaire (track 7), approximate the texture of the Italian trio sonata, with paired instruments over a continuo, but the rest have two pairs of solo instruments and mix the concertante or contrast principle with other kinds of ensemble writing. The movement structure is purely French, with sequences of very short movements that carry some kind of programmatic content. These were, for their time and place, rather experimental works, but their genius is that they have a relaxed ebb and flow in spite of that; they are loose in structure and have a sense of discovery of fresh textures. Malgoire and Les Dominos get the loose-limbed spirit of the music, offering textures in which the bass viol of Guido Balestracci is almost an equal partner with the violins and/or flutes above. The ensemble playing of this new group is exceptional, and one awaits with interest any move they might make toward repertoire beyond the French 17th century.© TiVo

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We don't know a lot about the composer Françoise Dufaut; it seems he was born around 1604, and the last mention of his name appears in 1672 - and then that is in a letter asking whether he is still alive... In the intervening years, he shows up in France, in England (curiously, around 1650, in the era of Cromwell's sinister religious dictatorship, the First Commonwealth and later the Protectorate, which put strict limits on all music), in Austria, and then probably again in England, where he likely died. On the other hand, he also left us a very ample repertoire of manuscripts and printed works for the lute, coming to 165 pieces, which delighted lutists throughout the 17th Century. Closer to our times, the lutist André Heinrich has picked out a lovely selection of Dufaut's works, five large and generous Suites, which he plays on a copy of a Viennese eleven-stringed lute made by Andreas Berr and dated 1690, the copy produced in 2001 by Ivo Magherini in Bremen. With its long, narrow body, Berr's lute follows the style of lutes from Bologna in the 16th Century, which were also the instruments most commonly sold in France in the 17th Century. © SM/Qobuz

With Les Indes galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau, György Vashegyi – along with his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir – makes a further dazzling addition to their Glossa series of French dramatic masterpieces from the Baroque, and in the company of a luxurious line-up of vocal soloists. The version of this “ballet heroïque” – supplied with an anti-colonial, anti-clerical manifesto by librettist Louis Fuzelier – selected by Vashegyi is the 1761 revision, a mere decade or so before the irruption onto the Parisian musical scene of the likes of Gluck and Grétry. Rameau’s score had undergone frequent adjustments and improvements since its première a quarter of a century earlier, and the performing edition for this recording, prepared for the Rameau Opera Omnia by Sylvie Bouissou (who also provides a booklet essay here), offers a vision of this work which is more theatrical, fluid and concise than hitherto. Just in themselves, the names of Chantal Santon-Jeffery, Katherine Watson, Véronique Gens, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Jean-Sébastien Bou and Thomas Dolié (sharing out the dozen solo roles) augur well for a glorious exploration of the prologue and three entrées ahead. Recently, they have also, in conjunction with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, been working on questions of tempo and how to perform Rameau’s sequences as the composer intended. Vashegyi brings a consummate understanding of Rameau’s galante style to the proceedings, following two previous Ramellian Glossa outings (Naïs and Les Fêtes de Polymnie). © Glossa

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