Véronique Gens - Agrippina - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Nearly a century before Gluck, another opera called Iphigenie en Tauride - same plot, same protagonists - had immense success on the opera stage. This 'first' Iphigenie has rather a curious history. The opera was sketched out by composer Henri Desmarest around the year 1695, but he was then banished from France by Louis XIV for having married a young girl without her father's consent. The uncompleted score of Iphigenie was then entrusted to Andre Campra. The opera, since lost and forgotten, was rediscovered by Benoit Dratwicki, Director of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, who marvels at it's stylistic unity 'Campra easily adopted Desmarest's style. He just added some virtuoso arias to the divertissements, as well as the tuneful choruses that were his speciality.' Iphigenie en Tauride had it's premiere on 6 May 1704, and was revived throughout Europe from 1711. Thanks to Herve Niquet, a top-flight team of singers, an orchestra well versed in French repertoire, and all their collaborative research into the practices and specific playing techniques of the early 18th century, Iphigenie sees the light of day once more.

Abundant though it is, César Franck's vocal music (operas, sacred music, oratorios, mélodies) does not occupy a prominent place in the current repertory. His instrumental compositions - headed by the Violin Sonata in A major and followed by the organ works - represent virtually all that today's audiences and musicians know of his output. Yet the mélodies and vocal duets, neglected by performers and publishers alike, deserve to be plucked from oblivion, both for their own sake and for their place in the history of French music. The alluring voices of Tassis Christoyannis and Véronique Gens immerse the listener in the atmosphere of the nineteenth-century Parisian salons and the mélodies performed there. The composer and organist César Franck, famed for his instrumental music, proves himself equally skilled in setting poems by Musset, Hugo, Chateaubriand, Daudet and Dumas. This first complete recording of his works for voice and piano ranges over his entire creative life.

Ean-Marie Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus provides an excellent opportunity for György Vashegyi, a luxury cast and music scholars at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to revisit the French Baroque operatic canon and emerge with a fresh new take on this established work, the violin virtuoso and composer's single offering for the Paris Opéra. For this recording György Vashegyi has made use of the original performing manuscript of the batteur de mesure, one consequence being that the dramatic structure of the work is tightened here, water-god Glaucus (Cyrille Dubois) convinces the reluctant nymph, Scylla (Judith van Wanroij) of his intentions towards her, but only once he has been to visit the wicked sorceress Circé (Véronique Gens) in search of magical assistance. A bad move, which culminates in a broken Glaucus looking out over the strait of Sicily towards a newly-formed rock formation... Called Scylla. Vashegyi's Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, and supporting singers, are on hand to do justice to the resulting French Baroque emotional panoply of rustic and demonic dances, welcomed and spurned love arias, and choral and divine interventions.