Jeffery Watson Wanroij Dolie Purcell Choir Orfeo Orchestra Vashegyi - Les Voyages de L'amour - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In Jephté by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, György Vashegyi directs - with style and energy - another riveting account of a neglected French Baroque opera. The work, based on the Biblical tale of a conquering general obliged, by a sacred vow, to sacrifice his own kin, became an immediate success in 1732, indeed a fixture in opera life in France, receiving over a hundred performances at the Opéra alone in the three decades following it's première. Montéclair and his librettist Pellegrin were open to preparing revised versions of the opera and it is the third and conclusive edition which has been worked on by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles and recorded by Vashegyi and his musicians. The central and demanding role of Iphise here is taken by Chantal Santon Jeffery, who is joined by Tassis Christoyannis as the unfortunate but successful-in-war title character, Judith van Wanroij as the bewildered but resolute mother and Thomas Dolié as the relayer of divine messages, Phinée. There is an imaginative and individual flair to Montéclair's music, nurtured by his extensive orchestral pit experience at the Paris Opéra - and Jephté is a work of his maturity. As well as the tautness of the third edition, the fruits of all this experience are to be heard here with the Orfeo Orchestra showing it's paces in zesty airs, minuets, marches and a chaconne, but also with a musette- tinged pastoral celebration - this last also allows the Purcell Choir opportunities to excel; elsewhere, the choir is called on variously to represent warriors, Israelites, and companions of Iphise.

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Gyorgy Vashegyi's new recording of Rameau's Dardanus superbly demonstrates the Dijon-born composer's genius, but also the mastery which Vashegyi - with his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir - has acquired in the music of the Late French Baroque. In conjunction with the preparation of a fresh edition for the Rameau Opera Omnia of the May 1744 version of Dardanus (under the aegis of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles), Vashegyi conducts from a score prepared by the composer (and his librettist Leclerc de La Bruere) following the work's rejection by Paris Opera audiences in 1739, with the intention of reinforcing the tragedie's dramatic action. Enacting this new sense of intensity on this Glossa are Cyrille Dubois in the title role of the warrior besotted with Iphise (Judith Van Wanroij), traumatized by her Inchguilty loveInch for the enemy of her dour father, Teucer (Thomas Dolie), who allocates the princess' marriage hand to a princely ally, Antenor (Tassis Christoyannis). With aid and abetment from Venus (Chantal Santon Jeffrey) and a Magician (Dolie again), Love conquers all. The dazzling array of solo singing featured here is accompanied, by turns, by joyful and mournful, festive and demonic choral interjections, the all couched in an exuberant, florid and decorative orchestral score (which includes the famous Chaconne).