Moliere à l'opera
Sheet Music

SKU: NX.GCD923509

By Jerome Correas and Les Paladins. By Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Classical. CD (1 disc). Published by Glossa Music (NX.GCD923509).

With Moliere à l'opera, Jerome Correas and Les Paladins bring their much-admired combination of Baroque musical stylishness and use of the technique of "parle-chante", adding colour and contrast to the sung text, to comedies-ballets composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier during the reign of Louis XIV. The musical and theatrical partnership involving Lully and Moliere - they were dubbed "les deux Baptiste" - was one of the most invigorating ever entered into, marrying melody, words, acting and a shared hunger for fame. The collaboration spanned ten works over a decade from 1661. Although Moliere never provided the words for a Lully "opera", the great dramatist clearly inspired the composer who was ten years his junior, in his later tragedies lyriques, a view upheld by the essayist for this recording, Elisabeth Giuliani. As well as presenting scenes from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, this new Glossa recording draws on the humorous end of the Moliere/Lully partnership in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac as well as more tragic airs from Psyche, by way of the trio grotesque from Charpentier's score for Le Mariage force. In Luanda Siqueira, Jean-Francois Lombard, Jerome Billy and Virgile Ancely, Jerome Correas has brought together a versatile vocal quartet, alive to the daunting and frequently crazy characterizations demanded by Lully and Moliere.