Prologue Kollobe

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops.

Most of us only think of the great Antal Dorati as a conductor, but this prominent Hungarian came from a family of musicians and started the study of music at the age of five, learning the cello a couple of years later and composition lessons beginning at 12; this in spite of the fact that he had already written several works, including three operas with original libretti, all of which he considered to be immature effords. His first composition teacher was Leo Weiner (1885-1960) who had a profound effect on Dorati's musical taste and performing background.

With Thésée, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques continue theirtour of Lully’s operas, in which they have become specialists. Lully’s third musical tragedy, and one of the least recorded, Thésée recountsthe hero’s youth, long before his battle with the Minotaur or his intrigues withAriadne and Phèdre. The story takes the listener on a journey through a series of changingsettings - from the underworld to the island of paradise, from Versailles toAthens - supported by the incredible vocal eloquence of Lully’s music,underpinned by a constant and hitherto unrivalled tension.

A masterpiece born of the collaboration of composer Lully and his librettist Quinault, the “tragédie en musique” called Alceste caused a scandal when it was created in 1674. The tragic register was reserved for the theater, while the music was content with the comic vein. But thanks to the combined talents of Lully and Quinault, the stage of the Royal Academy of Music saw the development of the new tragic and lyrical genre.

Médée, a tragedy in a prologue and five acts on a libretto by Thomas Corneille, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s first and last collaboration with the Académie Royale de Musique. The work was premiered on 4 December 1693, when Charpentier was exactly fifty years old and at the height of his career. Louis XIV attended the performance, proving that it was an eagerly awaited event. Yet this sombre drama, which disconcerted the public, was withdrawn after just ten performances, and not heard again until 1976. A specialist in the French repertory and a close associate of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, where he has followed all the advances in research and historically informed performance for thirty-five years, Hervé Niquet has endeavoured, in presenting this new Médée, scrupulously to apply all the scholarly findings available to us today.

Connaitriez-vous Mademoiselle Duval, compositrice d’un unique opéra, Les Génies, joué neuf fois en 1736, qui connut un franc succès et n’a jamais été repris depuis sa création à l’Académie Royale de Musique de Paris ? Chanteuse et compositrice, Mademoiselle Duval est la seconde femme à y avoir créé un opéra, à la suite d’Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Si sa vie reste mystérieuse, cette claveciniste confirmée au point d’éblouir le public en tenant le continuo à la création des Génies, écrivit une œuvre de divertissement contemporaine des Indes Galantes, déployant à chaque acte une nouvelle intrigue amoureuse centrée sur les Génies des Eaux (Les Nymphes), de l’Air (Les Sylphes), de la Terre (Les Gnomes) et du Feu (Les Salamandres). C’est une petite merveille que la curiosité de Camille Delaforge nous livre enfin, dirigeant avec passion cette rareté du répertoire français avec un absolu bonheur !

Le Carnaval du Parnasse, Mondonville's heroic ballet, was a dazzling triumph at its premiere in 1749, eclipsing Rameau'sZoroastre, which premiered the same year. Dedicated to the Marquise de Pompadour, muse of the arts and the omnipotent favourite of the King, this whimsical carnival is nothing short of a deliciousmarivaudage: on Mount Parnassus, Apollo and his Muses indulge in feasts of the senses and entertainments of the heart…Mondonville displays prodigious virtuosity throughout, depicting unheard-of orchestral colours and imagining unbridled dances and vast ceremonial choruses comparable to those in his great motets. Alexis Kossenko and his ensemble Les Ambassadeurs ~ La Grande Ecurie, joined by the eminent vocal power of the Choeur de Chambre de Namur, have made an exceptional rediscovery of this masterful reincarnation of the splendours of the Court of Louis XV, then at its apogee.