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To say that André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry's 1784 comic opera, Richard Coeur de Lion, has a lot to answer for is something of an understatement, when it was its popular Act I air, “O Richard, O my King”, which in 1789 accidentally brought about one of the defining moments of the French Revolution: the air is sung by the imprisoned King Richard's knights who want to free him, and one night in 1789 it became the song French officers chose to sing to King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette under house arrest at Versailles after the couple turned up to greet the officers at a banquet thrown in the Royal Opera House; which in turn got interpreted by the Paris press as an anti-revolutionary act, leading to the palace being stormed and the royal couple taken away, never to return. Add the fact that Grétry was none other than Marie-Antoinette's favourite composer, and the opera was an obvious choice for the Royal Opera House's 250th anniversary season. Plus, the October 2019 production under the direction of Hervé Niquet was a wonderful one: fizzing with vivacious energy and fun, nailing its grandeur and intimacy in equal measure, all with just the right dose of heart-on-sleeve sentimentality, and from a no-exceptions superb cast of young talent - headed up by tenors Rémy Mathieu as Richard and Reinoud Van Mechelen as Blondel - supported by an on-fire Le Concert Spirituel. So, although with this live recording you don't get to enjoy the production's sumptuous late eighteenth century stage sets and concerts, the music making was of a level for it all still to be leaping out of the stereo regardless. What's more, the polished, immediate engineering has done a magnificent job of capturing the theatre's acoustics, meaning you really do feel as if you're sat there in the theatre's best seats. Then, while one might imagine that non-French speakers may get less out of the audio alone, given that the opera's action moves forwards not via sung recitatives but instead spoken texts, the reality is that the vim and melodious tones with which those spoken lines are dispatched actually amounts to a sort of music in itself. In short, thank goodness they snuck this one in before Covid, because it's a life-affirming triumph. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

This album reveals a performance recorded and filmed at the Queen’s Theatre at the Palace of Versailles in July 2017. Virtually unused for two centuries, restoration work on this stunning building that was designed for Marie-Antoinette began in 1925, with the original machinery being refurbished in 2001. It’s the only 18th century theatre in France that’s still in good condition, following the example of the Drottingholm in Sweden.On the 19th of September 1780, Marie-Antoinette was on stage playing the heroine of Devin du village, a one-act opera by Jean-Jacques Rousseau—one of the most famous works of the period. The Genevan philosopher, who loved neither the theatre (deeming it “a monument to luxury and softness”) nor French music, played into his own contradictions with this charming work, which had almost fallen into oblivion before it was recorded by a few pioneers, such as Robert Dunand and his Collegium Academicum de Genève in 1978.Created in 1752, this short opera composed in the spirit of an Italian interlude was an extraordinary success, much to the surprise of Rousseau. Remaining in the repertoire until 1829, it was performed over 540 times and was frequently performed in Lyon, New York (1790), Quebec (1846) and, of course, Geneva (1785), Rousseau’s home town.This new take on Devin du village under the direction of Sébastien d’Hérin, which was re-enacted in costume and staged with the original sets, was a huge success in 2017. The liveliness of this version has revived interest in a work that’s often judged too harshly; a work that was only ever intended to entertain. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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