Customer Reviews

Lully: Les Divertissements de Versailles

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Considering his historical importance as the founder of French Baroque opera, it is perhaps surprising that Jean-Baptiste Lully has not received the same degree of attention on disc as his rivals and followers. The revival of French Baroque music which has been such a phenomenon over the last two or three decades has only rarely paid him much attention. Listeners seem to find the harmonic daring of Marc-Antoine Charpentier or the incredible colour and imagination of Jean-Philippe Rameau far more to their taste. Lully's suave, well-crafted music is often dismissed as bland beside the music of these figures and that of Lully's English follower, Purcell. But as this well-filled (78 minutes) disc of extracts from the whole range of his stage music demonstrates, Lully was a considerable and innovative composer in his own right. If you are new to Lully, this is the ideal place to start.

The new recording tells the story of how this ambitious, and frequently ruthless, young Florentine transformed himself into a French citizen and friend of "Le Roi Soleil", just as he transformed the Italian opera of the mid-seventeenth century into something uniquely Gallic. Lully began by catering to the young King Louis XIV's mania for dance with a series of comedies-ballets written in collaboration with Moliere. Extracts from two of them, "Georges Dandin" and "L'Amour Medecin" are included here, where the Italian influence is still strong with plenty of lively comedy. This phase of Lully's career culminated with the amazing five-hour extravaganza, "Psyche", in 1671. Two powerful choruses from this divertissement start the disc.

It was while he was working on "Psyche" that Lully met the librettist Philippe Quinault who was to be his partner in forging a distinctively French form of opera, the 'tragedie lyrique'. Quinault's contribution was vitally important since Lully saw opera as an equal marriage of words and music. The key would be expressive recitative rather than the show arias that dominated the Italian 'opera seria' of the time. The chorus and ballet would also play a major part in the divertissements which ended each act, offering a chance for Lully to show off his musical imagination. Some of the best examples of this come in the extracts from the opera "Isis" (1677) included here. In fact the first audience found the music rather too imaginative and it soon acquired the reputation as a work for connoisseurs only, 'the musicians' opera'. One of the connoisseurs who appreciated it was Henry Purcell. The "Scene de Froid" inspired him to write the wonderfully atmospheric Frost Scene in his "King Arthur" (1691). You can hear immediately what appealed to the Englishman's imagination - the chattering chorus and shivering violins conjure up a vivid impression of extreme cold. It is quickly followed by a scene depicting blazing heat - the smithy of the Chalybes, where the ringing percussion suggests the music of Wagner's Nibelheim two hundred years later. But the most haunting music is a lament by the god Pan for the nymph Syrinx, after her transformation into a reed. It is touchingly accompanied by woodwind and an organ. The characteristic Lullian blend of words and music (which is possibly one reason why many non-French speaking Baroque enthusiasts find a whole Lully opera hard to listen to) is illustrated by scenes from "Armide" and "Roland". In the latter, the hero Roland searches for his lost love Angelique. Lully's music conjures up a beautiful pastoral scene using only smoothly sliding strings, becoming more and more troubled as Roland learns from the names carved into the trees that his beloved has married his rival, Medor. Finally, Roland explodes into rage, his anguish turns to madness and the music rages too. In "Armide", the eponymous heroine, a pagan sorceress, has lulled the Christian hero Renaud asleep so she can stab him to death. However, when she sees him lying defenceless, she falls in love with him and cannot bring herself to commit the murder. Armide's monologue included here, where she hesitates between hatred and love, has always been rightly regarded as one of the high points of the entire French repertoire with its masterly psychological depiction of the tortured enchantress. The disc ends with a love duet between Armide and Renaud from the final act of the opera, followed by another dance, the massive 'grande passecaille'. Its interweaving musical lines have an extraordinary, hypnotic beauty.

Christie's staging and recording of the opera "Atys" is widely considered one of the landmarks in the revival of Lully and this new disc is generally very well performed. My one quibble is with Rinat Shaham who takes the part of Armide - her voice is not really powerful enough to suggest the mighty sorceress, especially when compared with Guillemette Laurens who took the role in the complete recording under Philippe Herreweghe. But otherwise, highly recommended, especially to those who have yet to appreciate Lully's considerable musical gifts. (Brys)

This recording is another example of the ability by Christie and Les Arts Florissants to breathe ideal levels of elegance and vivacity into the music of the French Baroque.

It comes a generation after Christie's groundbreaking recording of Atys and Les Arts Florissants has only become better with age. They have now recorded several operas by Charpentier and Rameau, but this is the first recording of Lully's operas we have heard from them since "Atys" in the early 1980s. It make me wish that Christie would record some full versions of Lully's operas.

In particular, I would love to see him do a complete version of Lully's "Isis". On this disc, the two tracks from "Isis" "L'hiver qui nous tourmente" and "Que le feu des forges s'allume" are worth the price of the whole disc alone! In fact, "L'hiver..." inspired Purcell's famous Frost Chorus in his "King Arthur"-- which is the subject of another excellent disc by Christie by the way!

quell élégance, quel grace extrême!

This superb recording of the compositions of Lully for the court of Louis XIV is almost perfect in delivery; evoking the sophistication, wit, grandeur, humor that would be required to entertain the most demanding of monarchs amidst the most sophisticated court in Europe. The character of Lully is fascinating. Lully was an Italian actor, dancer and musician who becomes the central creative force in music theatre in the court of the Sun King. However it is the flawless music that is contained in this recording that should be heard. With use of period instruments William Christie and Les Arts Florissants paint a range of compositions from various operas and periods in Lully's career in the court of the Sun King. The ten vocalists have absolute control of the material, evoking the type of control that must have been necessary in the performances at court. In L'Amour Medecin, Comedy, Music, and Ballet sing together: "Let us three unite with zeal unrivalled." Certainly this was Lully's philosophy and vocation. In Georges Dandin we hear the followers of Love debate the followers of Bacchus as to whether Love or Drink is the greatest pleasure. The themes of erotic and romantic love appear to be those that Lully realized would best entertain the court. In Armide we have the lines: "The world lies at the feet of this young hero. How could one think he was born for nothing but war? He seems made for love." Mythological themes and sweet seduction are also frequent themes as in Isis where Pan sings: "Throw your vain fears to the winds! Put love and its charms to the test." The themes of seduction, romance, erotic love permeate the works, here presented with a structured and calculated text that does not give the singers permission to over-interpret. Such grand music, controlled themes and texts, must be a reflection of the atmosphere of power in the court of Louis XIV. Working within this confine of taste, order, and temporal power, Lully was a master and these works reflect that creativity of a composer who fully embraces the need to please and entertain in a politically safe manner as a central motivation for his efforts. Les Arts Florissants does a wonderful job re-creating these highly polished entertainments.

Amazon is to be congratulated for enabling these masterpieces of the seventeenth century to transported to our own time.Louis XIV and Lully were an inspiring combination and,let it be noted,probably no more extravagant then our masters in Brussels today, whose dreary tyranny will not be remembered four centuries from now.

I only would like to say that this is a first class disc. I love classical music since the barroque century to our days. Thank you very much.

Great music, wonderfully performed, historically accurrate,
what else could we ask for.