Les Déguns 2

Il y a quelque chose d’insupportable à voir aujourd’hui tous ceux qui minimisaient la question complotiste prendre soudain conscience de sa profonde imprégnation dans le monde entier… Trop tard ! Il fallait le comprendre plus tôt. Ce n’est pas en se constituant en « observatoires » d’intellos mal informés appelant à la « rééducation » des gens atteints par cette névrose mondiale que la lutte peut se mener. En face, les complotistes, plus forts que jamais, poussent le vice jusqu’à dire qu’il est insensé de les accuser de « complotisme » alors qu’ils ne font que « poser des questions »…

This wonderful disc is a collaboration between Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer (an a cappella ensemble that specializes in the traditional songs of Quebec and Acadia) and La Nef (a trio that specializes in both early and contemporary classical music). The title refers to the crossing of waters both great and small by centuries of sailors; the program combines traditional seafaring songs with accounts of the Seven Years' War and its attendant sea battles. Many of the songs are in the unison, call-and-response style that will be familiar to fans of traditional Quebecois music, and sound very much like early recordings by La Bottine Souriante accompanied by a string section.

Written at the request of Louis XIV in honour of his sisterin- law, Henrietta of England, Le Ballet royal de la naissance de Vénus was performed in 1665 with Henrietta herself as the goddess of love and youth. In twelve entrées, this grandiose spectacle, combining dancing, music and poetry, served the power of the king, while attesting to the magnificence of his court. Musically very inventive, it shows the culmination of the ballet genre, on which Lully was to draw in creating the tragédie en musique. To complete the programme, excerpts from Les Amours déguisés (Armida’s famous lament “Ah! Rinaldo, e dove sei?”), Psyché, Le Bourgeois gentil homme and Le Carnaval - from the latter, a piece recycled from Les Noces de village, a burlesque aria sung by the boastful village schoolmaster Barbacola, a basso buffo role that Lully wrote for himself.