Ryan Brown - Sancho Panca - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Andre Ernest-Modeste Gretry was the greatest French composer of opera-comique in the eighteenth century. His librettist for Le Magnifique Jean-Michel Sedaine took a tale by La Fontaine and fashioned it into a compelling libretto. Gretry responded with an outstanding score including one of the first programmatic overtures in musical history. His expressive love music and extended preludes and postludes add to the theatrical variety of this important and varied opera.

First performed at Versailles in 1745, the opera ballet Zelindor is a delightful rococo pastorale which found favour with Louis XV' mistress, Madame de Pompadour, no doubt because it's story about a king who loves a commoner reflected her own situation. Opera Lafayette’s 2007 revival was hailed as “brilliant” by The Washington Post, which praised the soloists, headed by Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, and chamber chorus who “sang with a gusto matched by the orchestra’s rhythmic pungency”. This is the work’s world première recording with full orchestra and chorus.

Le Roi et le fermier made Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny famous in France and beyond. Set in an evocative and at times stormy Sherwood Forest it tells of a King's encounter with a humble farmer, blending comedy with serious issues. It's numerous innovations foreshadow Romanticism, making it a milestone in operatic history, with librettist Michel-Jean Sedaine admiring Monsigny's daring in taking Inchthe risk of setting a new genre to musicInch. InchThis production should be noted and remembered in the annals of Versailles, for the intelligence of it's staging, the beauty of it's sets, and it's high musical quality.Inch