Rameau: Les Fetes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour

Le Concert Spirituel, Niquet, Hervé

GCD 921629

The latest in Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel’s “reinvigorations” of French operatic music from the Baroque and beyond for Glossa is Jean-Philippe Rameau’s 1747 Les Fetes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, a ballet heroique in a prologue and three entrées, the whole work designed, when first created, to comprise a complete theatrical spectacle. Music for dancing – as befits a ballet – is given a prominent role and Rameau is able to create new orchestral sonorities, especially in the ballets figurés which encouraged the author to compose especially expressive symphonies and to give the choruses – even a double-chorus – an integral role in the action. Added to this are supernatural effects, and plots for the entrées which explored the then uncommon world of Egyptian mythology (including a musical depiction of the flooding of the River Nile). In his vocal music Rameau deftly switches between the Italianizing style and the French mode of expression current in the mid-18th century, all of which allows the team of vocal soloists – led by the three sopranos Chantal Santon-Jeffery, Carolyn Sampson and Blandine Staskiewicz – to demonstrate their accomplished talents. Overseen by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, and with a descriptive booklet from Thomas Soury, this new recording is an important addition to the Rameau catalogue – the more so in the 250th anniversary year of the composer’s death. It brings to life one of Rameau’s finer, if underrated, compositions, and a dramatic work written on the cusp of important reforms in opera.

CD x 2

Glossa

9/30/14

8424562016293