The Furies (2019)

The Grandes Eaux de Versailles (The Versailles Fountains Show) is a selection of works from the new CDs and DVDs label “Château de Versailles Spectacles”: Les Arts Florissans, L’Europe galante, Le Devin du village, The Missa of Cavalli, “The Quarrel of the Te Deums” of Blanchard and Colin de Blamont, The Sun King Mass (DeLalande, Couperin, Lully), the Biber’s Missa Salisburgensis, the Lully’s Te Deum and Phaeton. Entirely recorded in the emblematic places of the Château, such as the Royal Opera, the Royal Chapel, La Cour de Marbre or the Little Queen's Theater (Trianon), you will find compositions interpreted by the best and most promising artists.

In 2015 our most recent Charpentier recording to date, La Descente dOrphée aux Enfers with young soloists and the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, received the Grammy Award for the »Best Opera Production« of the preceding year and Gramophones »Editors Choice.« Our new CD featuring two »mini-operas« by Charpentier again offers enthralling performances of this court music of charming dance character and elegance. In contrast to Charpentiers other operas, Les Plaisirs de Versailles is directly associated with Louis XIV.

This is the story of Phaéton, valiant driver of the Sun’s chariot, led here by Vincent Dumestre and Benjamin Lazar, armed with a rich acquaintance of two decades of Lullyist cooperation. Just like at the time, they will make the Versailles Opera resonate with this production of this flamboyant tragédie lyrique which was first presented in Perm in Russia in 2018.

Giovanni Antonini, flautist and founder of the legendary Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, enjoys musical voyages, the discursiveness of music. He begins with an anonymous 16th century pavane, La Morte della Ragione (The Death of Reason), which he believes refers to In Praise of Folly, in which its author Erasmus distinguishes between two forms of madness: ‘a sweet illusion of the spirit,’ and a negative form, ‘one that the vengeful Furies conjure up from hell…’ This succession of ‘musical pictures’ leads us to the threshold of the baroque era, starting out with the Puzzle Canon by John Dunstable (1390- ca.1453), whose manuscript is an enigma, via the ‘bizarre’ style of Alexander Agricola (1446- ca.1506) and his obsessive, ostinato rhythm – almost an anticipation of minimalist music…to the improvisatory freedom of the Galliard Battaglia de Scheidt (1587-1654), a battle piece involving a great many diminutions or ‘divisions’, a common technique of improvisation in the Renaissance… This grand instrumental musical fresco of time and space is a kind of self-portrait of Giovanni Antonini and his longstanding musical colleagues.