In 1743, two years before Rameau’s Platée, Boismortier created an extraordinarily modern and madcap "comic ballet", Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse. As the exuberant plotunfurls, Cervantes’ hero encounters monsters, enchanters, princesses and people from Japan, making for plenty of offbeat and audacious dances and choruses. Musical beautyrubs shoulders with satirical and irreverent comedy. A choice work for Hervé Niquet, who leads his Concert Spirituel with unparalleled energy! © Château de Versailles Spectacles

Cinq-Mars is an 1877 opera by Charles Gounod, written a dozen years after his last big hit, Roméo et Juliette. It's based on a historical novel by Alfred de Vigny about the Marquis of Cinq-Mars, a nobleman who attempted to rally resistance to Cardinal Richelieu and in 1642 was executed for his pains. The work harks back to the tradition of French grand opera and was never very successful. It fell into a series of numbers at a time when audiences were getting a taste of a different way of doing things, not just from Germany, but from Verdi also. But it does contain numbers that show Gounod's undiminished melodic gift: sample the "Cavatine" of the Princess Marie Gonzaga, the linchpin of the wholly fictitious romantic subplot added by Gounod and his librettists. Marie is sung by Véronique Gens, who leads a cast of uniformly strong singers, and this live performance, with the Munich Radio Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Choir under the direction of Ulf Schirmer, has plenty of energy. The recording is available in a sumptuous hardback package with beautiful classic design; the event may not live up to the presentation, but the idea, as a counterweight to the instant reproducibility of art in the Internet age, is a good one.© TiVo

Massenet’s Cendrillon, a fairy tale opera sometimes flirting with operetta, was an immediate and lasting success from its premiere in Paris in 1899 at the Opera Comique before fading away in provincial theatres and then being resurrected at the end of the twentieth century. It was then shown, first in Washington, San Francisco and then, in 1984, at the New York City Opera under the direction of Julius Rudel who had already revived it and brought it back to life with the present 1978 recording. It was seen again recently in France and, in 2018, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in a crazy and charming production directed by Laurent Pelly.With its subtle and sophisticated instrumentation, its strong lyricism and its script which is fairly faithful to Perrault’s tale, the work combines Massenet’s best qualities. Recorded in the generous and pleasant acoustics of All Saints' Church, Tooting, on the outskirts of London, this version features an excellent cast: Frederica von Stade, Jane Berbié, Jules Bastin, and, sadly, some might say, the tenor Nicolaï Gedda, not that he's bad, but simply out of place in a role that was originally given to an in disguise soprano which is what made it so attractive.But let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of listening to a production as light as a feather, with secondary roles that are just as well held, an orchestra, the Philharmonic, that is lively and supple, and choirs of a very high standard. One of the masters of French opera is also revealed here as a first-class symphonist. © François Hudry/Qobuz

In the 18th century, it was common for theatre audiences around Europe to shudder in their seats. Performances at the time would often put an exotic twist on the not-so-distant past, forcing viewers to once again confront the terror of the Battle of Vienna, which ended the Turk’s second siege of the Austrian city. The Ottoman threat had now receded: people could now enjoy a coffee and croissant in a café, and the much-loved Viennese pastries were born. Tales of harems, Christian slaves and the orient, such as One Thousand and One Nights, frightened, intrigued and amazed the population. Not to be outdone, composers made sure to put their mark on this growing craze. “Turqueries” were fashionable in both operas and instrumental music, and orientalism allowed for all kinds of fantasies. This wave of exoticism became especially popular in Paris, particularly in its Opéra-Comique, one of the oldest theatres in France.Soprano Florie Valiquette, from Quebec, offers us a brilliant, moving and light take on this repertoire. Her grace, coupled with her skilful versatility, means she successfully tackles a diverse range of works. Created in 2019 for the Fantômes de Versailles, the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal regularly plays in the pit of the recently restored theatre at Versailles. This building is also used for recordings performed under the label Château de Versailles Spectacles, now almost exclusively available on Qobuz, and there’s so many great projects in the pipeline!Built around excerpts from Grétry’s La Caravane du Caire, which enjoyed great success following its premiere in 1783, the programme also includes excerpts from Gluck’s Pèlerins de la Mecque and Mozart’s L’Enlèvement au sérail, sung in French. Complemented by works by Philidor, Monsigny and Gibert, the “gallant turqueries” presented here paint a fairly accurate picture of the type of performances enjoyed by French society in the second half of the Age of Enlightenment, just a few years before the great upheaval of the French Revolution. © François Hudry/Qobuz

It's one of those fairy stories that the world of lyrical music likes to keep secret. Still an unknown and barely emerged from the La Scala Lyrical Academy, Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili was given the title role in Carmen by Baremboim, alongside Jonas Kaufman: an international career seemed to beckon for the young singer. And so here we will hear some of opera's great tunes, including, of course, the hits from Carmen, but also the two great arias from Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saëns, a pair from Verdi, a touch of Mascagni, some Rimski – less-frequently performed, it is true – and a rarity from his compatriot Dimitri Arakishvili (1873-1953) whose style is solidly anchored in the Russia of his day, with several, probably regional, twists. Since 2009, she has sung Carmen's role around three hundred times, and we can only hope that she never gets bogged down in it - and takes on Santuzza, Eboli, Dalil: in other words, the great characters of the dramatic mezzo repertoire. © SM/Qobuz

The Baroque period was characterised by dramatic, grandiose structures, in the fine arts as well as in music. An array of exuberant expression with curved, sinuous lines took over all the arts. This was the starting point for this recording by mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac and Héloïse Gaillard at the head of her ensemble Amarillis.This "road movie" into the land of madness invites us to discover its different faces through some of the composers of the time. From the famous theme of the "Folies d'Espagne" used by Reinhard Keiser in his comic opera Jodelet to the Gavotte en rondeau from Carnaval et La Folie, a lyrical comedy by André Cardinal Destouches, there’s a whole itinerary that inscribes madness in her role as a seductress, charmed and triumphant in André Campra's Fêtes vénitiennes, or of love madness through the character of Sémélé set to music by Destouches and Marin Marais, without forgetting a detour into perfidious Albion with Purcell and Eccles.Love obviously comes with jealousy, one of the recurring themes of tragedy and consequently of opera. Instrumental music is not forgotten in this recording with a Concerto a 7 by Heinichen skillfully blending German, French and Italian influences in a European style ahead of its time. This programme invites us to discover a whole array of affects, which seem to have excluded the most terrible madness of all - that of war... © François Hudry/Qobuz

CPO follows its stellar releases of Conradi's Ariadne and Lully's Thésée by the Boston Early Music Festival with an equally extraordinary performance of Lully's Psyché. These are works that have had limited exposure and are known far better by reputation than by performances or recordings. What's revelatory about the recordings of the Lully operas is how exceptionally attractive the music is; it's amazing that works of this quality have been unheard for centuries, and their resurrection, particularly in performances as fine as these, is a cause for rejoicing for any opera lover eager to look beyond the standard repertoire. Lully's vocal writing, even his recitatives, is graceful and expressive, and the numerous ensembles in Psyché are marvels of charm and inventiveness. The variety and cleverness of his orchestration keeps the listener constantly engaged. Much credit goes to Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, who lead the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and Chorus, and to all the musicians who contributed to the realization of the score. The performances are elegant, but never stuffy, and they are bursting with energy and liveliness. It's remarkable to encounter a cast of such high quality and consistency; it's a real achievement for the directors to have assembled a cast of over 20 soloists who sing with beautifully pure, fresh, focused tone; the understanding and ability to master the idiom and complex system of middle Baroque French ornamentation and immaculate French pronunciation. They also bring strong, vivid characterizations to their roles, so the performance has real dramatic energy. CPO's sound is absolutely clean and beautifully balanced. Highly recommended. © TiVo

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 Opera Rara label and company, true to their name, resurrect forgotten operas. There is an abundance of those in the output of Jacques Offenbach, who wrote some 100 operettas and opéras bouffes, few of which are remembered today. Opera Rara made a good pick with La Princesse de Trébizonde (1869), and this release made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023. Offenbach is as full of good, Arthur Sullivan-like tunes as ever, and he even discarded a number of them from the operetta's original production in Baden-Baden in the process of preparing a new version for Paris. Those discarded pieces are included here, and there could hardly be a better testimony to Offenbach's melodic fecundity. Better still is the action, taking place in a carnival sideshow and suggesting all kinds of ideas for a production set in modern times. It is gloriously preposterous even by operetta standards. A girl, Zanetta, accidentally breaks the nose off a wax figure of the Princess of Trébizonde and agrees to stand in for the figure herself. A prince (a pants role) -- who has dropped a lottery ticket into the till in lieu of paying admission -- falls in love with the "Princess." Meanwhile, the lottery ticket, with a castle as the prize, comes up a winner and overturns the relationships between rich and poor. The comic scenes thus spawned are handled with the needed high spirits by the cast and the several choruses (executed by Opera Rara's remarkable house chorus), and conductor Paul Daniel is ideal in this genre, consistently pushing the tempo just slightly in order to bring the forward momentum. This recording is based on a 2022 London production but is a "cast recording," not a live one, and it is quite clear sonically. La Princesse de Trébizonde has been recorded only twice before, once in Russian (!) and once for French radio in 1966; this sprightly performance is much needed.© James Manheim /TiVo

Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine ("The Human Voice") is a one-woman opera, less than an hour long, about a woman on the phone with her boyfriend as they break up. Set to a text by Jean Cocteau, it puts the woman through strong mood swings. (Country music fans may wish to compare it to As Soon as I Hang Up the Phone, although there, the boyfriend is present to deliver the final blow.) Soprano Véronique Gens is best known for music from the 17th century up to Mozart, but it is easy to believe the claim in the publicity materials for this release that she had always wanted to record this work; its direct, conversational quality, interspersed with occasional freakouts, fits her manner beautifully. It might seem that those freakouts require a bit more intensity than Gens gives them here, but that is not really in the Cocteau spirit and certainly not in the Poulenc spirit. Gens receives sensitive support from the Orchestre National de Lille under Alexandre Bloch, who also ring down the curtain with a lithe performance of the joyous Sinfonietta. There are other strong performances of Poulenc's little opera, which ought to be much more frequently heard and would be ideal for university voice programs, but this one is instantly appealing and quite memorable, and it is no surprise that it made classical best-seller charts in early 2023. © James Manheim /TiVo