3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lully: Alceste is a landmark in the history of French Opera, June 7, 2007
This review is from: Lully - Alceste (Audio CD)
It would seem that this set is very hard to find as Astree Auvidis discontinued this back in the mid 90's, and to date (June 07) there does not seem to be an alternative complete recording.
For Jean-Claude Malgoire this version was his second having previously done a 3 disc Vinyl LP version back in 1975 on CBS 79301 also with the Grande Ecurie et La Chambre du Roy
but not with the same cast as the later version. I felt the treatment of the newer CD version was slightly faster and missing were the part where the Children sang the small chorus in the LP version.Having said that i was not unhappy and modern advances in recording have breathed new life into this seldom heard Opera.
It was ironic that i posted a "Want it" on the net and managed to obtain it from a private collector in the USA after looking at all the Amazon sites for months.
The LP version also hard to find may be easier if you do the homework
This Opera is both musical and dramatic and mostly due to the variety of scoring. The blending of the different genres was unique at the time. Get it if you can,wonderful stuff!
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