Leclair Scylla et Glaucus

Leclair's single opera Scylla et Glaucus may lack the sheer audacity of his teacher Rameau, but it's enormously likeable…the performers respond…stylishly to Leclair's charming if slightly predictable sound-world…and the conducting preserves a neat balance between drama and ornament…It is clear that Gardiner favours intervention over chilly authenticity; whether or not you agree with all his decisions, the clarity of the image he presents is often provocative and always bracing.

Jean-Marie Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus (Tragédie en un prologue et cinq actes, Paris, 1746) provides an excellent opportunity for György Vashegyi, a luxury cast and music scholars at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to revisit the French Baroque operatic canon and emerge with a fresh new take on this established work, the violin virtuoso and composer's single offering for the Paris Opéra.

Jean-Marie Leclair, a pure product of the 18th century, was at the crossroads of styles, cultivating a virtuosic art combining melodies à la française and Italian virtuosity stemming from Corelli and Vivaldi. He was 49 when he undertook his first (and only) lyric tragedy: Scylla et Glaucus. In the greatest French tradition, this work combines sumptuous numbers of sentimental outpourings with frightening scenes of fury and terror, in which the orchestra, with forceful passages, plays a dazzling role.

What if the tour de force of French opera in the Age of Enlightenment was Scylla et Glaucus? At the age of 50, the famous violinist Leclair decided to write his first operatic piece, investing irrepressible energy in it. The drama is unrelenting: the nymph Scylla spurns the advances of the Demigod Glaucus, who seeks out the sorceress Circe to cast a spell on her; Circe is in love with Glaucus, drives Scylla to madness and turns her into a deadly rock… An infernal scene, an ocean storm and final cataclysm are employed to give striking relief to this trio of unappeased love, the effusions of irresistible beauty. The conductor and violinist Stefan Plewniak conducts a glorious stage of soloists in the eddies of vengeance!

For approaching a century and a half in France – across the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI – the Palace of Versailles played host, both indoors and outdoors, for an extraordinary sequence of dramatic musical performances. Un Opéra pour trois rois, conducted by György Vashegyi, represents the legacy of that time, a specially constructed operatic entertainment drawn from works by composers from Lully to Gluck, commissioned – and even, on occasion, performed – by kings, their queens and inamoratas.

A brilliant dancer before becoming “famous throughout Europe for his learned and elaborate sonatas, and for the elegance of his performance on the violin”, Jean-Marie Leclair is far more than the sum of his talents. His music is woven with the multiple threads of his life, carrying within it all the facets of his technical and musical explorations, his travels, his impressions, which have moulded man as much as musician.

A brilliant dancer before becoming “famous throughout Europe for his learned and elaborate sonatas, and for the elegance of his performance on the violin”, Jean-Marie Leclair is far more than the sum of his talents. His music is woven with the multiple threads of his life, carrying within it all the facets of his technical and musical explorations, his travels, his impressions, which have moulded man as much as musician.