Emmanuelle Chriqui Entourage Promoshoot

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence has firmly established itself as France’s preeminent summer festival and is a key fixture on the international festival calendar. It is particularly in the field of opera that the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence continues to break new ground and this release from the 2016 festival demonstrates that. In this new staging – a coproduction with the Opéra de Lille, Théâtre de Caen – Emmanuelle Haïm directs Le Concert d’Astrée with a star-studded cast including Franco Fagioli, Sara Mingardo, Michael Spyres, and exclusive Erato artist Sabine Devieilhe.

Handel wrote the secular oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The triumph of Time and of Enlightenment) to the text of one of his patrons, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, in Rome in 1707. The libretto, which doesn't stand up to close logical scrutiny, centers on Beauty, who must choose between self-indulgent Pleasure and the austerity of allegiance to Time and Enlightenment. Needless to say, any patron entering the theater for the performance, having noted the title on the playbill, would have no doubt about the outcome of the struggle, so dramatic suspense cannot have been one of the inducements for an eighteenth century audience. The rewards, however, are real, most notably Handel's remarkably fertile inventiveness and musical ingenuity, which justified sitting through a two-and-a-half-hour performance that was guaranteed to be a dramatic non-starter. Handel keeps recitatives to a minimum, and the oratorio is rich in musical substance and variety.

The major debut on Decca DVD of Danielle de Niese. Returning to the opera house where she sang her sensational Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare, Danielle performs the title role in Monteverdi's great opera of lust and power, in Robert Carsen's new, modern-dress staging. De Niese is perfectly cast as the beautiful and seductive Poppea who ruthlessly grabs power as Nero's lover but, in this production, is doomed from the moment of her coronation. De Niese's performance is vocally and dramatically powerful, perfectly complemented by Alice Coote as Nero. The two are supported by an outstanding cast, together with period-performance stars Emmanuelle Haïm conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Carsen creates an intelligent and visually-strong production, focusing on the personal side of the story. At times the action is violent and shocking, but this is juxtaposed with episodes of lightness and humour.

Giulio Cesare, the most popular of Handel’s operas, is named after the great Roman emperor, but its most memorable character is Cleopatra. In this production by Laurent Pelly from Paris’ splendid Palais Garnier, the role of the Egyptian queen is assumed for the first time by Natalie Dessay, described by the Telegraph as “a supreme vocal enchantress”.

The fact that the role of Handel's Cleopatra includes enough music to fill out a CD, and that, combined with the music's demands for immense virtuosity and versatility, makes it a daunting challenge and Natalie Dessay is impressive in her account of these excerpts. Dessay's singing is not entirely consistent throughout the album, recorded in 2010, whether because some arias are simply better suited to her voice than others, or because she was not at her best for some of the recording sessions. While the agility and precision of her coloratura are always intact, in some selections, such as the arias "Tutto può donna vezzosa," and "Venere bella," Dessay's voice sounds lighter than it does on albums from earlier in her career, and even a little breathy in her lower register. In other arias, though, she conveys the remarkable fullness and purity for which she is renowned. "Se pieta di me non senti" is breathtaking; her gleaming tone is practically voluptuous and she spins lines of miraculously velvety smoothness and searing emotional intensity.

Henri Dutilleux's work has been gaining attention through a number of significant recent recordings. Esa-Pekka Salonen recorded his Correspondances with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Ludovic Morlot has recorded both his symphonies, as well as other works, as the new conductor of the Seattle Symphony. This opportunity to experience and appraise his work casts him as among the most significant French composers of the late twentieth century.