Les Paladins / Jérôme Correas COUPERIN Leçons de Ténèbres

‘A few years ago, I was composing three Leçons de Ténèbres pour le Vendredy Saint, at the request of the Dames Religieuses de L[ongchamps], where they were sung successfully [...] even though the singing is noted in the key above, every other voice type would be able to sing them, especially since most of the people who accompa- ny nowadays know how to transpose...’.

This is what François Couperin says in the preface of the Leçons de Ténèbres du Mercredy Saint, giving us some very useful insights for better understanding a work that we must listen to here without the context of a religious ceremony or a church. (Jérôme Correas)

Les Paladins / Jérôme Correas MOLIÈRE À L'OPÉRA Stage music by JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY

With Molière à l’opéra Jérôme Correas and Les Paladins bring their much-admired combination of Baroque musical stylishness and use of the technique of “parlé-chanté”, adding colour and contrast to the sung text, to comédies-ballets composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier during the reign of Louis XIV. The musical and theatrical partnership involving Lully and Molière – they were dubbed “les deux Baptiste” – was one of the most invigorating ever entered into, marrying melody, words, acting and a shared hunger for fame.

The collaboration spanned ten works over a decade from 1661. Although Molière never provided the words for a Lully “opera”, the great dramatist clearly inspired the composer who was ten years his junior, in his later tragédies lyriques, a view upheld by the essayist for this recording, Elizabeth Giuliani. 

As well as presenting scenes from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, this new Glossa recording draws on the humorous end of the Molière/Lully partnership in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac as well as more tragic airs from Psyché, by way of the trio grotesque from Charpentier’s score for Le Mariage forcé. In Luanda Siqueira, Jean-François Lombard, Jérôme Billy and Virgile Ancely, Jérôme Correas has brought together a versatile vocal quartet, alive to the daunting and frequently crazy characterizations demanded by Lully and Molière. (GLOSSA Music)

Les Paladins GEORG-FRIEDRICH HAENDEL Cantates & Duos Italiens

In 1760, Rameau composed Les Paladins, a lively, witty and imaginatie comédie lyrique. In taking its name from a work by the greatest French composer of the eighteenth century, Les Paladins its aim: to explore lesser-known works of this operatic repertoire, which it performs in chamber versions. The ensemble has presented L'Europe Galante by Campra at the Festival du Haut-Jura, Iphigénie en Tauride by Desmarest at versailles, La Grotte de Versailles by Lully in Paris (tercentenary of the death of the great French landscape gardener Le Nôtre), as well as Grands Motets by Bernier at the Ambronay Festival and in Geneva, and Cantatas by Bach and Telemann at the Musicales d'Oppède and at the Lourdes Festival. Jérôme Correas and Les Paladins are very interested too in the virtuoso Italian repertoire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and have performed cantatas and serenades by Handel, Stradella, Cesti, Carissimi and Bononcini at Chartres ("Samedis Musicaux"), Paris (Théâtre Grévin), Ambronay, Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache... The programme presented on this recording has already been given in concert at many festivals.