Meyerbeer was a precocious composer and this album traces some of his very earliest works. Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen was his first stage work, a charming rural vignette that contains all the essential features of a ballet-divertissement couched in writing that enchantingly evokes the 18thcentury. Collaborating with his teacher, the Abbé Georg Vogler, Meyerbeer composed DerAdmiralin1811. The following year saw Wirt und Gast with the vivid Oriental exoticism of its Janissary music, while Romildae Constanza, his first Italian opera, shows his complete assimilation of Rossinian models.
From the mid-1820s onwards Auber’s career was filled with success. His opéras-comiques and grands opéras won repeated acclaim for their myriad qualities of Parisian elegance. The fifth volume in this series features two of his Sicilian operas and both centre on well-delineated female characters. Brimming with grace, charm and lyricism, the extensive ballet from Zerline exemplifies why Auber’s music was so popular. Philippe Musard’s Quadrille No. 2 on themes from Zanetta shows the extent of Auber’s contemporary popularity and is a revealing cultural souvenir of the period.