Marais Ariane et Bacchus Véronique Gens, David Tricou, Mathias Vidal, Judith van Wanroij; Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet Alpha Classics ALPHA 926 126:25 mins (2 discs)
Now remembered mainly as a master player and composer of viol music (and as a pupil of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe – as depicted in the 1991 film Tous les Matins du Monde), Marin Marais was also a serious opera composer. He first learned his trade as one of Lully’s composition pupils, and then as the older composer’s music assistant.
Lully’s influence is strongly evident in this world-premiere recording of Marais’s 1696 tragédie en musique, Ariane et Bacchus. Urgent tempos, glowing choruses and spirited dance sections are all there. So are languorous recitatives, some shapeless arias and long stretches of perfunctory orchestral writing. The meandering libretto by Saint-Jean doesn’t help, and the work is saddled with a plodding and sycophantic Prologue dedicated to the glory of Louis XIV. Things get moving after Act I, when Marais begins to experiment and innovate with comic ensembles, a haunting dream sequence and an astonishing mad scene for Ariane.
Judith van Wanroij is radiant in the title role, but her vocal steeliness is occasionally a little too brittle. Mathias Vidal is consistently warm and seductive as Bacchus, while Véronique Gens appears as a powerfully commanding Juno – initially in league with Bacchus’s love rival, Adraste, sung with muscular intensity by David Witczak. Hervé Niquet conducts the Concert Spiritual with characteristic vigour in a historically informed performance shorn of instrumental ‘trinkets’. The spacious acoustics of the Jean-Baptiste Lully Conservatoire auditorium add amplitude to the joyous singing of Versailles’ Centre de Musique Baroque chorus.
John‑Pierre Joyce