After Passion (ALPHA747), Véronique Gens reunites with Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas' ensemble Les Surprises to celebrate a type of role intrinsically linked to 17th- and 18th-century French baroque opera: queens! “Operatic queens are powerful women, often torn between duty and passion, with a fundamentally complex psychology. They display a range of emotions to match the theatre’s dramatic and scenic effects; they also demand above all music that is by turns intense and sophisticated.” writes Benoît Dratwicki of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, a partner in this project. With Véronique Gens, one could not dream of a better embodiment of these women's destinies set to music by the most famous composers of the time (Rameau, Rebel, Dauvergne, Royer, Desmarest, Salomon, Stuck, Destouches, Francœur…), many of whom have been unjustly forgotten.

Venice was surely the capital of music and the arts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and one of the most coveted positions in the city was that of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica.