Rameau: Les Boréades
$80.00
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JEAN PHILIPPE RAMEAU
Rameau: Les Boréades
Collegium 1704, Václav Luks
[ Château de Versailles Spectacles / 3 CD ]
Release Date: Friday 11 September 2020
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Rameau's career was coming to an end when in 1763 rehearsals began for his last work, Les Boréades, intended for the Fêtes Royales de Choisy in June, celebrating the end of the Seven Years' War. On 27 April the reahearsals took place in Versailles, then... nothing more. Les Boréades was not part of the royal festivities, and the composer's death in 1764 plunged his last tragédie lyrique into oblivion, and it was not to see the light of day for another two centuries! Yet what a splendid opera it is, Rameau's most accomplished, for he was in full possession of his creative means at eighty years of age. The writing for orchestra and choir is wildly virtuosic, the melodic invention exceptional, the drama is powerful: it is a veritable musical testament, a succession of violent elements, passionate duets and heartrending lamentations. Taking on this monument of French music, Václav Luks brings together magnificent soloists and his choral and orchestral forces, which regularly resound in the Royal opera: their determination is admirable and Versailles really does owe it to Rameau, since the unfinished rehearsals of 1763, to make a second recording of his masterpiece!
"a splendid performance of a splendid work, one that can be readily recommended to those interested in the composer or the French Baroque in general. For those not yet captured by the glories of Rameau, it would be a fine introduction to them." Fanfare
"There's a vigour and charm to the choruses and dances that is quite irresistible...All this is superbly performed by Václav Luks and his Czech chorus and orchestra. The principal soloists are, mostly, French or Belgian. As the much put-upon Alphise, Deborah Cachet is particularly forceful in 'Songe affreux'This is a first-rate performance, on a par with Gardiner's terrific recording on Erato." Gramophone
"The results are exceptionally satisfying, Václav Luks capturing the boisterous directness of the work, while not neglecting the more Ramellian finesse on which a French conductor might have been expected to concentrate. The Belgian soprano Deborah Cachet is a strong Alphise" Opera
Tracks:
Rameau: Les Boréades, RCT 31, Ouverture [4:42]
Rameau: Les Boréades, RCT 31, Acte I [27:32]
Rameau: Les Boréades, RCT 31, Acte II [36:44]
Rameau: Les Boréades, RCT 31, Acte III [30:18]
Rameau: Les Boréades, RCT 31, Acte IV [31:51]
Rameau: Les Boréades, RCT 31, Acte V [33:13]
