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

For many years, it was only Manon and Werther that were heard among Massenet's operas, but his reputation appears to be on the rise, and his champion, conductor Laurent Campellone, has recorded a good number of them. Ariane, from 1906, is one of the last to receive its recorded premiere. The Palazzetto Bru Zane label, specializing in obscure French opera, does a typically fine job here; the sound is superb, and the cast of singers, led by the soprano Amina Edris in the lead role, offers several revelations. In his later operas, Massenet often attempted to put a French stamp on the newer styles of the day, and here, it is Wagner who gets this treatment; the opera is built around a set of motifs de rappel (or "reminiscence motifs"), whose parentage in Wagner's leitmotifs is clear. This structure is shoehorned into the durable machinery of French opera. There are big entrance scenes, a pantomime, and plenty of spectacular stage machinery to go with the love triangle plot involving Ariane (Ariadne), Phèdre (Phaedra), and Theseus, who gets to take on the Minotaur in a grand scene with Wagnerian bass trumpet and bass trombone. Massenet's orchestration is impressive throughout. The work does not have the inevitability of truly great art, but it is in no way dull, and anyone with any interest in French opera should hear it for the singers alone; enough of those listeners have already weighed in and put the album on classical best-seller lists in the late summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo

For his last season at the helm of the Opéra de Bordeaux, Marc Minkowski—always keen to conduct forgotten works which have, in some way, marked the history of music—sets his sights on Robert le Diable, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera which was a true social phenomenon in 19th century France. The Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de musique romantique française has followed suit by officially publishing this concert version, which also features some excellent vocal soloists. Admired by Balzac, Sand and Dumas, this ‘grand opéra à la française’ (great French opera) faded into obscurity after the First World War. Its creator became a sort of pariah – one met with both condescension and mockery. With its ‘seductive and haunting melodies’ (Alexandre Dratwicki), it’s nevertheless a flamboyant work that greatly inspired his contemporaries, such as Verdi, who referred to it in La Traviata. The extraordinary impact of Robert le Diable was such that it was performed a great many times on every continent. A true one-man band, Marc Minkowski has invested himself entirely in this undertaking, learning this vast score practically by heart and conducting it with his usual power and conviction. The international cast is full of surprises thanks to their deep understanding of the work and the protagonists’ fantastic pronunciation. This new release, to the credit of the Bru Zane label, revitalises our knowledge of this work that’s scarcely mentioned in specialised dictionaries. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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 musical world owes a debt of gratitude to French conductor Christophe Rousset not only for the vital, exquisite performances he delivers with the ensembles Les Talens Lyriques and Choeur de Chambre de Namur, but for his work in bringing to light neglected masterpieces of Baroque opera. Lully's Bellérophon, premiered in 1679, was a huge success in its time, with an initial run of nine months. Part of its popularity was doubtless due to the parallels that could be drawn between its plot and certain recent exploits of Louis XV, but even the earliest critics recognized the score's uniqueness and exceptional quality within Lully's oeuvre, so it's perhaps surprising that it has never been recorded before. The distinctiveness of the music was likely a result at least in part of the fact that Lully's preferred librettist Philippe Quinault was out of favor at the court of Louis XV at the time, so the composer turned to Thomas Corneille for the libretto, and Corneille's literary and dramatic styles were so different from Quinault's that Lully was nudged out of his comfort zone and had to develop new solutions to questions of structure and the marrying of music to text. It is the first opera for which Lully composed fully accompanied recitatives, and that alone gives it a textural richness that surpasses his earlier works. The composer also allows soloists to sing together, something that was still a rarity in Baroque opera. There are several duets and larger ensembles; the love duet, "Que tout parle à l'envie de notre amour extreme!," is a ravishing expression of passion and happiness, as rhapsodic as anything in 19th century Italian opera. The level of musical inventiveness throughout is exceptional even for Lully; the expressiveness of the recitatives, the charm of the instrumental interludes, the originality of the choruses, and the limpid loveliness of the airs make this an opera that demands attention. Rousset and his forces give an outstanding performance that's exuberantly spirited, musically polished, rhythmically springy, and charged with dramatic urgency. The soloists are consistently of the highest order. Cyril Auvity brings a large, virile, passionate tenor to the title role and Céline Scheen is warmly lyrical as his lover Philonoë. Ingrid Perruche is fiercely powerful as the villain, Stéenobée, and Jean Teitgen is a secure, authoritative Apollo. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra are fluent in the subtle inflections of French middle Baroque ornamentation. The sound of the live recording is very fine, with a clean, immediate, realistic ambience. This is a release that fans of Baroque opera will not want to miss. Highly recommended. © TiVo

It was time for Ludovic Tézier to finally provide his admirers with a recital. His performances as a Verdian baritone are impressive: Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Falstaff, Giorgio Germont (La Traviata), Posa (Don Carlo), Le Conte De Luna (Il Trovatore), Renato (Un ballo in maschera), Iago (Otello). And almost all of these are reprised in this solo album. To this impressive list of stage roles, Tézier brings the welcome addition of arias from Ernani, Macbeth and Nabucco all accompanied by Frédéric Chaslin at the head of the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna. It was in 1998 in Tel Aviv that the French baritone played his first Verdian role. He was thirty years old when he was Ford in a production of Falstaff. "There is an absolutely fascinating energy in Verdi, both for the audience and for the singers", he admits. "His roles are usually very challenging, but his music acts at the same time as a fountain of youth. Verdi is brimming with vitality, which is what allowed me to return to the stage just two days after my father's death". Now with a fully-matured voice, Ludovic Tézier is in demand all over the world for his Verdi roles. He is one of the best performers of Verdi's work, standing alongside the late Piero Cappuccilli who remains his great role model. This record offers timely confirmation of his stature. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

Recorded at the Royal Opera of Versailles, this "pastorale héroïque" is a co-production of the Festival d’Ambronay, which has released it on its own label. Inspired by Lully's Acis and Galatea of ten years earlier, André-Cardinal Destouches composed Issé to mark the prince's wedding celebrations at Trianon. The work met with great success right away and was performed several times at Versailles, right up to the wedding celebrations of the future king Charles X, before it went on to conquer the Paris Opéra. Issé's lighthearted plot is full of the obligatory amorous reversals and twists: Apollo, disguised as the shepherd Philémon, is assiduously pursuing the nymph Issé. The work delighted the King, who had it staged again, with Madame de Pompadour reprising the role of the nymph, in 1749. "The version upon which this record is based was published in 1724, by Jean- Baptiste Christophe Ballard. This revision truly perfected the work: it improved whole sections and added some remarkable pages. Houdar de La Motte re-wrote several lines, while Destouches undertook a wide-ranging re-working of the rhythm and the instrumental setting of the great arias, in such a way that the dramatic material remained recognisable", François Escande says. Closely linked to the needs of the French Court, this pastorale is probably Destouches's masterpiece, quite a feat if you consider that this was his first lyrical work. It links the charm and refined sensibilities of the 17th Century with the eloquent, brilliant and expressive spirit that the following century would love so passionately. Conducted by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, this version sparkles with intelligence thanks to a virtuoso orchestra (Les Surprises) and a team of larger- than-life singers who fit their roles perfectly. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Cherubini's Les Abencérages, premiered in 1813, heralds the spectacle and extravagance of Romantic grand opera. From the Alhambra gardens to the battlefield, the action skillfully intertwines political conspiracies with a love story. Underpinned by the energy and timbres of period instruments, this recording demonstrates the work's modernity and it's musical qualities. Anaïs Constans valiantly tackles the demanding role of Noraïme, while Edgaras Montvidas displays his lyric tenor voice in a series of sublime airs whose beauty was already hinted at by none other than Roberto Alagna in a recital disc released in 2003. Around this couple, a plethoric cast of soloists (Dolié, Sargsyan, Williams, Martin, Lavoie, etc.) achieves the same high standards of French diction and style. The Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi, flanked by the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, reveals here another key milestone of French Romantic opera. © Bru Zane

Jean-Philippe Rameau originally conceived Les Fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour as a ballet héroïque on the subject of the Egyptian gods. Pragmatically, he later adapted it to celebrate the royal marriage of Louis, Dauphin of France to Maria Josepha of Saxony. This 2014 Glossa release marks the 250th anniversary of Rameau's death, though the music is far from gloomy. Le Concert Spirituel, under the direction of Hervé Niquet, performs the ballet in delightful Baroque style, with rhythmic precision, scintillating ornamentation, and fresh sonorities, and the re-creation of Rameau's score has all the elegance and panache one would expect of a courtly entertainment. The vocal writing is quite florid and fanciful, but the French cast is a joy to hear, even though the mythological libretto is quite stilted and almost nonsensical by modern standards. Recorded in Versailles, the sound is extraordinarily clear, vibrant, and detailed, so audiophiles are in for a treat, even though the format is standard CD. Highly recommended for fans of Baroque theater works. © TiVo