JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU Les Indes galantes
GCD 924005
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Chantal Santon-Jeffery Katherine Watson Véronique Gens Reinoud Van Mechelen Jean-Sébastien BouThomas Dolié
Purcell Choir Orfeo Orchestra György Vashegyi
Production details
Total playing time: 60:45 + 62:56 Recorded at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall of Müpa Budapest, Hungary, on 25–27 February 2018 Booklet essays by Sylvie Bouissou (CNRS) and Benoît Dratwicki (CMBV) English – Français – DeutschMade in Austria
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JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU (1683-1764) Les Indes galantes Ballet héroïqueParis, 1735 (1761 version)
CD I ProloguePremière Entrée – Les Incas du Pérou
CD II Deuxième Entrée – Le Turc généreux Troisième Entrée – Les Sauvages
About this album
With Les Indes galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau, György Vashegyi – along with his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir – makes a further dazzling addition to their Glossa series of French dramatic masterpieces from the Baroque, and in the company of a luxurious line-up of vocal soloists.
The version of this ballet heroïque – supplied with an anti-colonial, anti-clerical manifesto by librettist Louis Fuzelier – selected by Vashegyi is the 1761 revision, a mere decade or so before the irruption onto the Parisian musical scene of the likes of Gluck and Grétry. Rameau’s score had undergone frequent adjustments and improvements since its première a quarter of a century earlier, and the performing edition for this recording, prepared for the Rameau Opera omnia by Sylvie Bouissou (who also provides a booklet essay here), offers a vision of this work which is more theatrical, fluid and concise than hitherto.
Just in themselves, the names of Chantal Santon-Jeffery, Katherine Watson, Véronique Gens, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Jean Sébastien Bou and Thomas Dolié (sharing out the dozen solo roles) augur well for a glorious exploration of the prologue and three entrées ahead. Recently, they have also, in conjunction with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, been working on questions of tempo and how to perform Rameau’s sequences as the composer intended. Vashegyi brings a consummate understanding of Rameau’s galante style to the proceedings, following two previous Ramellian Glossa outings (Naïs and Les Fêtes de Polymnie).