Cyrille Dubois / Tristan Raës LILI & NADIA BOULANGER Mélodies

                                                                        MÉLODIES

Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset ANTONIO SALIERI Tarare

After Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Les Talens Lyriques concludes the group’s cycle of Antonio Salieri’s French operas with the world premiere recording of Tarare.  Often unfairly overshadowed by his brilliant contemporary Mozart, Salieri here composed a genuine masterpiece on the only libretto ever written by Beaumarchais.

Salieri has a taste for exoticism and, like Mozart in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, he transports us into a fantasy Orient seen through the eyes of the pre-revolutionary philosophy of the Enlightenment.

The indefatigable Christophe Rousset, unswerving in his efforts to revive scores that are rarely performed or have mysteriously languished in the shadows, directs a five- star cast: the Captain of the Guard Tarare (Cyrille Dubois) enters the palace of the Sultan Atar (Jean-Sébastien Bou) in order to rescue his beloved, the slave Astasie (Karine Deshayes). Behind the love triangle, one senses Beaumarchais’s indictment of authority in his depiction (in 1787!) of the people’s revolt against the Sultan’s tyrannical power - so much so that it is astonishing that the plot escaped the royal censor’s net.

The music follows the story’s misunderstandings, plot twists and spectacular scenes to produce an opera that prefigures Romanticism, exhilaratingly performed by Les Talens Lyriques and Les Chantres of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. A release that should restore Salieri’s prestige once and for all.

Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset ANTONIO SALIERI Les Horaces

Les Talens Lyriques are a major french classical music ensemble, recognized on the international scale for both its musicological work and editorial choices. Created twenty years ago by french harpsichordist and conductor Christophe Rousset. The ensemble has a large lyrical and instrumental repertoire ranging from Baroque to Early Romanticism.

Following the release of Les Danaïdes in 2015, Les Talens Lyriques present the first world recording of Antonio Salieri’s Les Horaces, which they recreated at Versailles in 2016. To bring this score back to life, Christophe Rousset gathered a vocal cast in which tenor Cyrille Dubois, Judith van Wanroij, Julien Dran or Jean-Sebastien Bou embody the fate of the characters inspired by the fratricidal struggle of Horatius and Curiatius in Ancient Rome, dramatically revived by an already romantic Salieri in his musical boldness. Fights, vows and great crowd scenes, the tears of heroine Camilla, the Curiatius’ dilemma, or the implacable determination of old Horatius offer intense and original drama.

Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU Pygmalion

Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion’s despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18^th century dances. Like Ovid’s Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau’s greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet.

Le Concert Spirituel / Hervé Niquet LULLY Persée 1770

Nearly a century after its composition, Lully’s Persée was recreated in 1770 to mark an exceptional event: the inauguration of the Royal Opera House at Versailles Palace, built to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin (the future Louis XVI) and Marie Antoinette. For this unique occasion, three composers (Antoine Dauvergne, François Rebel and Bernard de Bury) were commissioned to revise Lully’s work and adapt it to the new circumstances and the new venue, which was regarded as absolutely extraordinary in its time.

Lovers of Lully’s opera will therefore meet their mythological hero again, now with a richer orchestration and more for the chorus and the ballet dancers to do. There were only two performances in 1770, but they were absolutely sumptuous: 95 choristers, 15 soloists, 80 dancers, 100 extras, 80 instrumentalists, five sets and 530 costumes.

You can now relive that historic event thanks to a recording conducted by the leading specialist in this repertory, Hervé Niquet, and a CD-book richly illustrated with engravings of the period and photos of the Opéra Royal and of manuscripts of the score.

Recorded at Versailles Palace in 2016, in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.