JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY ProserpineTragédie lyrique de Jean-Baptiste Lully
Le Concert Spirituel Hervé Niquet
GCD 921615
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Performing artists
Proserpine: Salomé Haller La Paix: Bénédicte Tauran Cérès: Stéphanie d’Oustrac Aréthuse, Cyané: Blandine Staskiewicz La Victoire: Hjördis Thébault Alphée: Cyril Auvity Mercure: François-Nicolas Geslot Ascalaphe: Benoît Arnould Jupiter, Crinise: Marc Labonnette La Discorde: Pierre-Yves Pruvot Pluton: Joao Fernandes
Production details
Recorded in Versailles and Poissy in September 2006 and November 2007 Engineered by Manuel Mohino Produced by Dominique Daigremont Executive producer: Carlos Céster Design: Valentín Iglesias (00:03:00) Booklet essay: Benoît Dratwicki (CMBV) English Français Español Deutsch
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JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY
ProserpineTragédie lyrique de Jean-Baptiste Lully
CD I [75:25] Prologue Acte Premier Acte Deuxième (Scènes 1-7)
CD II [76:55] Acte Deuxième (Scènes 8-9) Acte Troisième Acte QuatrièmeActe Cinquième
About this CD
Hervé Niquet's long-term project to breathe new life into the French Baroque operatic tradition yields another exciting new discovery with the tragédie lyrique composed by Jean- Baptiste Lully in 1680, Proserpine. Following a three year gap in their collaboration, Jean- Baptiste Lully and librettist Philippe Quinault had reunited to create Proserpine, a reflection of the increasing maturity of Lully as a composer as much as the mastery of Quinault in penning lyrical dramas centred on mythological stories. Three centuries after the first performance in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel pay tribute to the genius of Lully with a new recording of Proserpine made just after stagings in both Paris and Versailles. Proserpine helps to place in context the two other tragédies recently released by Niquet and his team - Destouches "Callirhoé and Marais" Sémélé, both written a generation after Lully's masterpiece. Together with a cast of top soloists well - versed in the demands of French Baroque singing and with his incomparable Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet once more conjures up a dramatic feast.
Hervé Niquet is far less interested in being known as a Baroque music specialist than for his passionate interest in all of French music, especially its vocal and lyrical compositions and nowadays he is as liable to be found directing a symphony orchestra as his own period instrument ensemble Le Concert Spirituel. It may come, for some, as a surprise to find Niquet teaming up with the Brussels Philharmonic to record Debussy but this future release will mark the inauguration of a new adventure for Niquet and Glossa focusing on the music associated with the Prix de Rome competition which drew in scores of leading French composers all the way from 1803 through 1968. [read more...]
Taking a leading role in the revival of tragédies lyriques (or tragédies en musique), the best of the French Baroque opera tradition, is a long, daunting (and expensive) challenge but one which Hervé Niquet has been keen to accept. Present as a singer in the chorus of Les Arts Florissants in 1987 when William Christie put on Lully’s Atys, Niquet formed his own ensemble, Le Concert Spirituel that same year. Since that time he has balanced his own endeavours to stage (and record) key French tragédies with his other musical interests, which extend from Monteverdi to Purcell and Handel (soon to be reissued – now on SACD – is Niquet’s recording of the Fireworks and Water Music suites) right the way through to later composers such as Schumann, Gounod and d’Indy.[read more...]