Composer: Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Pascal Collasse, Henry Desmarest, Jean-Baptiste Lully
Performer: Véronique Gens, Ensemble Les Surprises
Conductor: Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA747
Release: 2021
Size: 1.02 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Lully: Amadis
01. Air “Toi qui dans ce tombeau”
02. Prélude
03. Collasse: Calme tes déplaisirs (from Achille et Polyxène)
04. Collasse: Thétis et Pélée: Tempête
05. Desmarest: Désirs, transports (from Circée)
06. Lully: Proserpine, LWV 58: Deuxième air
07. Lully: Ballet du temple de la paix, LWV 69: Entrée des Bretons, passepied
Lully: Proserpine
08. Air et chœur “O malheureuse mère”
09. Air et chœur “Que tout se ressente de la fureur que je sens”
10. Lully: Espoir si cher et si doux (from Atys)
11. Lully: Sarabande ‘Dieux des Enfers’
12. Lully: Le bourgeois gentilhomme: Canaries
13. Lully: Enfin il est en ma puissance (from Armide)
14. Lully: Persée, LWV 60: Ouverture
15. Lully: Voici le favorable temps (from Le triomphe de l’amour)
16. Desmarest: La Diane de Fontainebleau: Chœur du sommeil
Lully: Alceste
17. Pompe funèbre
18. Air et chœur “La mort, la mort barbare”
Charpentier, M-A: Médée
19. Air “Quel prix de mon amour”
20. Air et chœur “Noires filles du Styx”
21. Lully: Air pour l’entrée de Borée et des quatre vents (from Le triomphe de l’amour)
This programme marks the eagerly awaited return of Véronique Gens to Baroque music and Lully, in which she made a name for herself at the start of her career. It presents airs from Atys, Persée, Alceste, Proserpine, Le Triomphe de l’Amour and other works by Louis XIV’s famous composer, but also several by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Médée), Henry Desmarets and Pascal Collasse.
Whether well known, rare or in some cases even unpublished, all of them present roles for powerful women whose love is unrequited: dark passions, bitter laments, jealousy, vengeance, the type of dramatic characters that Véronique Gens embodies with all the charisma that has made her reputation. This recording is also the result of an encounter with the youthful Ensemble Les Surprises, founded and directed by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas. Together they conceived this programme, which mingles airs, dances and choruses, in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.
Here she returns to her French baroque roots, her voice still youthfully fresh…with a tragedienne’s clarity of diction and histrionic eloquence…The final sequence, climaxing in Charpentier’s Medée, the masterpiece of the period, shows Gens at the height of her interpretative powers.