[ Aparte / 2 CD ]
Release Date: Friday 24 November 2017
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A master stroke born of the collaboration of the composer Lully and his librettist Quinault, the musical tragedy Alceste caused a great stir at the time of its creation in 1674. At that time, Tragedy was reserved for the theater, while the music concerned itself with the comedic. But thanks to the combined talents of Lully and Quinault, the stage of the Royal Academy of Music saw the development of the new tragic and lyrical genre.
In addition to the choir, the nine soloists, directed with energy and finesse by Christophe Rousset, present here characters with passions more real than life. The libretto is based on a Cornelian dilemma. This timeless theme of a thwarted love moves us all the more because of the clarity of the text and the amplification of emotion in the score.
Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques recording is an interpretation where theater and music combine in jubilant harmony
Gramophone Award Finalist 2018 - Opera
"Few if any conductors match Christophe Rousset's understanding of Lullian style and rhetoric...His pacing and inflecting of the music seems unerring...[and he] draws compelling performances from his singers, all of whom sound at ease in the tricky-to-master art of natural French declamation...it is hard to imagine this music, often delightful, sometimes witty, intermittently touching, coming alive more vividly than it does here." Gramophone Recording of the Month February 2018
"Lully's unjust reputation in Britain as a third-rate Frenchified Purcell has taken a knocking in recent years, especially thanks to Rousset's fine recordings. This, his seventh complete Lully opera on disc, is one of the best." Sunday Times
"Outstanding among the stylish cast are Judith Van Wanroij as the eponymous heroine, her delivery pliant and lucid, her satin tones persuasively seductive…Rousset draws alert and vital playing from his crack instrumental ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, while his direction of the unfolding drama is responsive but never overblown." BBC Music Opera Choice April 2018