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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 Apart from the Malgoire version from 1975 with Bruce Brewer and Felicity Palmer, which is starting to become outdated, the real treat is a second versoin by the same Malgoire twenty years later with Jean-Philippe Lafont and Colette Alliot-Lugaz...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

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

Composed on 1686 as part of the festivities organised by the Duc de Vendôme in honour of the Grand Dauphin, during the latter’s visit to his estate at the Château d’Anet in September of that year, Acis et Galatée is Lully’s last complete opera. His faithful librettist Quinault having retired from writing for the stage, he collaborated this time with the poet Campistron on a work that tells the story of the love between the sea-nymph Galatea and the shepherd Acis – a love threatened by the violence of the jealous cyclops Polyphemus. This opera, an undoubted dramatic success, gives the orchestra an important part, expressively evoking, for example, the giant’s cries of anger, the terror of the chorus, and the lovers’ hasty flight in Act III. It includes some magnificent pieces, including the final Passacaille, as well as inventive treasures, such as duet for hautes-contre (high tenors) “Ah! je succombe au tourment qui m'accable”, or the burlesque march that accompanies the entry of Polyphemus and his fellow cyclopes, conveying their uncouthness. But the loveliest pieces in the score are for Galatea: “Enfin, j’ai dissipé la crainte”, for instance, or “Que ne puis-je expirer après ce coup funeste?”. Lully died in March 1687, a few months after the première, leaving Achille et Polyxène unfinished. © Aparté

Francis Poulenc's late opera La voix humaine (1958) seems ideally suited to the age of cellular telephony, and indeed, it is showing signs of revival with several new productions. This 2023 recording by soprano Julie Cherrier-Hoffmann and the Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice di Venezia should contribute to the trend. La voix humaine is an operatic monodrama, but of a modern kind; the single character is a woman, simply named Elle (She), talking on the phone, being dumped by her boyfriend, and hinting at suicide. The text was written by Jean Cocteau in 1930, when dropped phone calls were no doubt common, but it works perfectly in a contemporary setting; the phone conversation is interrupted by panicky "Allô allô" interjections. Poulenc's musical language for dealing with this text is remarkable, and it is not like that in any of his other compositions. The singer is unaccompanied when she is directly addressing her hearer, while the passages in which she narrates events are accompanied by the orchestra. This creates an uncanny impression of an actual phone conversation. Poulenc's harmonic language here is quite modern in comparison to his other works, not quite atonal but shorn of the popular tinge present in so much of his work. Cherrier-Hoffmann's performance is appropriately stressed out, and she is shown in the graphics with her hands splayed across a window as if trapped. Conductor Frédéric Chaslin emphasizes the orchestra's big, operatic sound, and this works; the engineering makes no attempt to disguise the opera house acoustic. Chaslin also contributes orchestrations of smaller Poulenc voice-and-piano works; these frame the opera and return the listener to the usual Poulenc world. This is an unusually satisfying Poulenc release and a fine performance of a work whose reputation is on the way up.© James Manheim /TiVo

Brigitte Fontaine, who started out sounding like a more adventurous version of Françoise Hardy, got steadily further out as the 1970s progressed. By the time of this recording, she was arguably too far out to even be categorized as a popular singer. Collaborating with songwriter Areski (who also takes some of the vocals, both alone and in partnership with Fontaine), this odd assortment of tracks includes pieces in which singsong lyrics are done a cappella or backed by nothing more than an instrument or two (not always guitar); dissonant avant-garde jazz miniatures that could serve as soundtrack material for suspense thrillers, occasionally overlaid with spoken poetry; and highly rhythmic cuts in which African drumming-like percussion patterns support Fontaine and Areski's experimental vocalizing, which can sound like bird noises or early New York "new music" exercises at times. It's not without its folky and melodic elements (particularly in some of Fontaine's singing), but it's tough listening, and not especially rewarding. This is due more to Areski's unattractively gruff and brusque vocals than Fontaine; to quote from the book of the jealous husband, he is not worthy of her. Confusingly, although the front of the sleeve bills this as a Fontaine album with the title Je Ne Connais Pas Cet Homme, the spine and back cover bill it to "Areski et Brigitte Fontaine," and the back cover gives the title Fontaine 4.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

The "Histoires Sacrées" of Marc-Antoine Charpentier are sometimes called little sacred operas, but they are really more like oratorios: they contain numbers sung by characters, but they have a great deal of narration, and they are in Latin. Sample here the scene in Judith, sive Bethulia liberata, H. 391, where Judith slices off the head of Holofernes: the emotional mood is just slightly heightened. These works have not often been recorded and take a bit of effort to absorb; one has to familiarize oneself with the Latin texts and with the mood of the whole, which is didactic rather than dramatic. The program here is strong, with three female biblical heroines exemplifying strength and virtue, and this helps you get into the expressive modes of the music. The "Histoires Sacrées" have not been recorded often. Until now the field has been ruled by a 2001 release from Gérard Lesne and his Baroque ensemble Il Seminario Musicale, and this release by the durable French group Ensemble Correspondances offers evidence of how much approaches vary in this still little-explored repertory. You can take your choice. Lesne has his engineers bring the microphone up to the soloists, whereas here, leader Sébastien Daucé chooses a more ambient approach that brings out instrumental detail. Lesne and his other soloists are stronger than the ones here, but Daucé may come closer to an authentic performance. Both choirs are small, probably in line with the private chamber circumstances for which these works were written; Daucé's group of 14 singers, mostly taking solos as well as singing in ensembles, is highly expressive even as it is woven into the more general texture. The album is accompanied by a DVD recorded at the Chapelle Royale at Versailles, but the main CDs were not: they come from small auditoriums in Grenoble and Amiens (apparently there were two sessions) that, as it happens, are entirely appropriate to the music. Recommended for Baroque buffs. © TiVo

Everyone knows Camille Saint-Saëns has a great sense of humour thanks to his Carnaval des Animaux in which no one escapes ridicule, not even him. Now the Palazzetto Bru Zane Foundation and Hervé Niquet have unearthed Phryné, a forgotten comic opera from 1893 enriched with recitatives composed by André Messager three years later.Received with immense and lasting success in its time, this brilliant work eventually fell into the abyss, never to be seen again. Fortunately, fans of Saint-Saëns made great efforts to rediscover his works on the centenary of his death in 2021. Phryné captures the "Grecomania" that was prevalent in all the arts in France at this time, especially in Offenbach’s music and even in architecture (just think of the beautiful Parisian district of New Athens in the 9th arrondissement). Ironically, and perhaps a little cheekily, Saint-Saens confessed that he was “working on this little piece with infinite pleasure” and was infatuated with this courtesan musician who had served as a model for the sculptor Praxitele.Always keen to discover a forgotten repertoire, Hervé Niquet brought together a few singers, Florie Valiquette, Cyrille Dubois, Anaïs Constans and Thomas Dolié, to breathe some life back into Phryné with his Concert Spirituel, with the aim of producing a concert version to be performed in the Opéra de Rouen Normandie in 2021. Though Lucien Augé’s libretto may seem tasteless today with its hefty dose of misogyny, Saint-Saens’ music is simply delicious, with a succession of arias and ensembles. This modest and charming opera-comedy, which Charles Gounod so enjoyed, offers a less serious and less academic take of a composer that well and truly deserves to be rediscovered. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The paladins, as video game aficionados know, were knights of Charlemagne's court, French counterparts to the Knights of the Round Table. In Rameau's opera, they are the basis for a broad medieval spoof that came down in bits and pieces from Ariosto through various hands, some of them unknown. Here, it receives a valuable new recording from rising young Baroque opera conductor Valentin Tournet and his vocal-orchestral group La Chapelle Harmonique. The opera, which Rameau called a tragédie lyrique, isn't quite in Monty Python territory, but at times, for instance, with the unmotivated entrance of a troupe of Chinese entertainers during a magical episode in the third act, things approach that. This was Rameau's last publicly performed opera, premiered when he was in his late 70s, and it was an uncharacteristic flop. Perhaps it was the overloaded nature of the whole thing, or perhaps the new stylistic breezes blowing in from Italy. It is, however, highly entertaining and loaded with good dance tunes and colorful orchestration. There are few recitatives, and those that do exist are tightly intertwined with the action and keep things moving. There are just a few recordings of this opera, and this one, with a sumptuous booklet and an appendix of material cut by Rameau, may emerge as the standard. It is beautifully recorded at the Palace of Versailles and conveys the scope an 18th century opera production would have had. Tournet has a strong cast, led by Sandrine Piau as the romantic lead Argie, in love with one of the Paladins but pursued as well by her guardian. (She moves over from the role of Argie's friend Nérine in one of the few earlier recordings of the work by conductor William Christie.) The various comic and dance elements come through vividly. This is a strong recording that will fill a lot of holes in Rameau collections. © TiVo

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Following their Ali Dragon and Tarmac side projects, A Plus Tard Crocodile is the first album in five years from the reunited French quartet Louise Attaque. Recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York and produced by Mark Plati (Robbie Williams), the 2005 follow-up to Comme On a Dit adds reggae and electronica influences to their more familiar folk-pop sound and includes the single "Depuis Toujours."© Jon O'Brien /TiVo