Having been relegated to a moral space of exclusion and fear in the Middle Ages, madness subsequently became a major social phenomenon. Brought under control and personified as 'Folly' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it provided scope for social and moral criticism, leading composers and librettists to give it a prominent place on the operatic stage. Here Stphanie d'Oustrac and the Amarillis ensemble present its multiple facets, from seduction to passionate love, from despair to joy, revealing the underlying truths of humanity in the Baroque era.

Orchestre baroque français, dirigé par le flûtiste, hautboïste et chef d’orchestre Hugo Reyne, La Simphonie du Marais défend depuis plus de 30 ans le répertoire musical des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, en tissant des liens uniques et particuliers entre le public, l’histoire, la musique et les autres arts.

André Campra s’attelle à la composition de sa série de «petits motets» dès son arrivée à Paris en tant que maître de chapelle de la cathédrale Notre-Dame (1694-1700). Très vite ces compositions remportent un vif succès et l’on se presse à Notre-Dame pour les écouter Les motets de Campra sont fortement influencés par la musique italienne : raffinements harmoniques, charme de l’accompagnement, écriture brillante et contrastée… Ils sont aussi de la main d’un homme de théâtre : le texte sacré se met en scène. Campra sait tirer profit de l’effectif restreint du petit motet : airs, récits, duos, trios et ritournelles s’enchaînent comme à l’opéra ! Mais son éloquence n’est pas sans profondeur et ses grâces savent encore nous toucher.

Campra’s famous Requiem emerged from a tradition that is still unjustly neglected. Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances offer us an opportunity to discover these maîtres de musique of Notre-Dame who, though now overshadowed by their brilliant colleague, made no less of a contribution to the development of the ‘French style’ emblematic of the reign of Louis XIV.

Soprano Sandrine Piau's new project is dedicated to French baroque repertoire, offering a wide range of very beautiful arias by Rameau, Lully, Campra etc in a 100-year journey that mixes very famous music with little-know pieces, such as arias by Grétry or Sacchini > Sandrine Piau and Jérôme Correas, a former singer, founder and music director of Les Paladins, have worked together on a regular basis since their early careers, especially with William Christie.

Campra was the most important opera composer between Lully and Rameau. The success of Europe Galante in 1697 is a tribute to this founding work of the Opera-Ballet, mixing dance and opera in the opulent divertissements. Campra takes the spectator on a voyage into the amorous nations of Europe. France moves to the rhythm of the genteel heartbeat of the shepherds and the shepherdesses, Italy refined but jealous and violent and finally the Sultan who has to soothe the criminal bitterness of the Sultana, who has been ousted by a beautiful slave. This is spicy musical banter created during the reign of Louis XIV, recovered by Les Nouveaux Caracteres directed by Sebastien d’Herin.

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops. In the labyrinth of sentiments, sorcerer Isménor's magic wand confuses the issues, luring the two heroes into the enchanted forest to better prepare their downfall. With Tancrède, André Campra (1660-1744) established himself as one of the great opera composers between Lully and Rameau.

This two-CD album brings together the two earliest recordings by La Petite Bande. They were made in 1973 and feature landmarks in two important French forms of entertainment—comedie-ballet and opera-ballet. Performed in 1670 at Chambord, one of Louis XIV's grandest country retreats, Le bourgeois gentilhomme was the high water mark of Lully's collaboration with Moliere and was to be the last work of its kind on which the two worked together. Moliere developed the comedie-ballet from the fashionable court ballets, working the dances and music into the body of the play with unparalleled skill. Lully, himself a dancer, proved a gifted partner as the music for Le bourgeois gentilhomme reveals.

Ce programme est l’évocation d’une bibliothèque imaginaire, celle de Jean-Baptiste Matho, célèbre chanteur de la Chapelle royale sous le règne de Louis XIV. Un testament musical au tournant du XVIIIe siècle, dans l’univers si particulier du petit motet pour taille (ténor), convoquant tour à tour Charpentier, Campra, Bouteiller, Suffret et bien sûr Brossard, qui nous interpelle par ce magnifique exorde : ‘Silentium. Dormi in hortis dilecta mea. Silence. Dors dans les jardins, mon amour.’"

Here is a very special recording devoted to early 18th-century dance music for which we have recently rediscovered choreographies from the period. Such a discovery may well come as a surprise, since it is not generally realised that, long before the proliferation of various 20th-century systems of dance notation, an earlied system had already been invented and them forgotten, only to be rediscovered within the last few years.

Even by the supremely high production standards of Alpha recordings, this issue is especially splendid. Entitled Versailles, L'ile enchantée, it fully lives up to its name. As directed by Skip Sempé, the widely varied program features music written for Louis XIV's pleasure palace, performed by the Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra with mezzo soprano Guillemette Laurens and bass violist Jay Bernfeld. Each work is superbly selected, and every performance is absolutely idiomatic and wonderfully alive. There is wit and tenderness and elegance and, yes, nobility to their performances, which taken together form as much a portrait of the Sun King as the palace of Versailles itself.

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops.
In the labyrinth of sentiments, the magic wand of the sorcerer Isménor confuses the issues, luring the two heroes into the enchanted forest to better prepare their downfall. Dances, choruses and arias merge in a subtle, poetic mixture, magnified by the dialogues sung in the grand tradition of French prosody and the tragédie lyrique. With Tancrède, André Campra established himself as one of the great opera composers between Lully and Rameau.

Loin des sentiers battus, entre les grands Français Lully et Rameau en passant par Couperin, il y a de la place pour des personnalités comme celles de Campra et Destouches. Les trois suites d’orchestre (datées du début du xviiie siècle) rassemblées ici sont tirées d’opéras ballets, genre musical particulièrement à la mode à la cour de Versailles. Successeur du ballet de cour et très longtemps avant les Ballets russes, la danse était au cœur du geste baroque. Que ce soit par l’escrime ou par les mouvements des danseurs, il y a bien cette volonté de représenter l’univers, ses forces et tutti quanti.

At the dawn of a new century when André Campra was busy writing his Carnaval de Venise (1699), was the composer aware that he would be passing onto the Académie Royale de Musique a fabulous and legendary work that would remain without successors? And whilst the court of the ageing Louis XIV was endeavouring to conserve the spirit of the Grand Siècle at Versailles, Paris was already humming with the new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

Campra's Idomenee (based on the same story as Mozart's Idomeneo) was first staged in 1712. Campra significantly reworked the score for the 1731 revival, and it is this second version of the opera that is recorded here. The opera follows the traditional tragedie-lyrique pattern having five acts and a prologue. But under Campra's pen (I mean, quill), the formalities of the genre are transformed into a genuine drama. The comparison between the 1712 and 1731 versions of the opera confirms Campra's intention to produce an emotionally realistic drama: the second version eliminated several minor characters and streamlined the plot thus achieving a better dramatic effect.