ANDRÉ-ERNEST-MODESTE GRÉSTRY (1741-1813)

Andromaque

CD I

Ouverture
Acte Premier

CD II

Acte Deuxième
Acte Troisième

About this CD

Working in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles and the Palazzetto Bru Zane (Centre de Musique Romantique Française), Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel carry on with their journey of rediscovering forgotten operatic works, this time pitting themselves against music from the close of the Age of Enlightenment, in Andromaque (1778), the single tragédie lyrique written by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741- 1813). Known above all for his light opéras- comiques, at the end of his career the composer turned towards an increasingly heroic style in the vein of Méhul and Cherubini.

The work reflects the tendency of an age of changes which was torn between a nostalgia for the times of the reign of Louis XIV and the cult of modernity and progress. Thus, it overlays on the barely- altered Jean Racine text of Andromaque (1667) a music already suffused with Romantic aspirations where literally unheard-of tones and accents clothe the passions of the Classical Greek age in a new guise. Never performed again after its initial production Andromaque today reveals all the modernity of the French school on the eve of the French Revolution and imposes itself without doubt as one of the most singular and unexpected links between the Baroque and Romanticism.