Lully reviews

Lully reviews

Labyrinth (David Greilsammer)

David Greilsammer (piano) (Naïve)
more

Lully - Armide 1778

Various; Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet (Alpha Classics)
more

L’Opéra des Opéras

Katherine Watson, Karine Deshayes, Reinoud van Mechelen; Le Concert Spirituel/Hervé Niquet (Alpha Classics)
more

Lully: Isis

Chœur de Chambre de Namur; Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset (Aparté)
more

A radiant restoration of Lully’s Isis

'Rousset pushes performers to their dramatic limits which highlights their flawless execution'
more

L'Opera du Roi soleil

Katherine Watson (soprano); Les Ambassadeurs/Alexis Kossenko (Aparté)
more

Judith Van Wanroij sings Lully's Alceste

Loosely based on Euripides’s drama Alcestis, Lully’s tragédie en musique spans the gamut of human emotion, from high tragedy to frothy comedy. Love in its many guises – passionate, flirtatious, noble and selfless – is the driving force of the opera. The work’s ultimate hero is Alcide (Hercules), a thinly disguised allusion to Louis XIV, whom Lully celebrates in the fawning Prologue and with bellicose and triumphant music.

more

Tonnesen and Norwegian Chamber Orchestra perform Richard Strauss and Lully

<div cl
more

Couperin's L'Apothéose de Lully and Leçons de ténèbres performed by Arcangelo

By the time L’Apothéose de Lully was published in 1725 the Italian style, long resisted in France, was well established, brought in by a veritable flood of sonatas and cantatas. With exquisite sensibility, François Couperin sought a ‘middle way’ by uniting the French and Italian styles to produce musical perfection.

more

Lully's Persée conducted by Hervé Niquet

Lully’s Persée was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1682. This version is a radical refit celebrating the marriage of the future Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 1770, coinciding with the long-awaited opening of the Royal Opera at Versailles. Three composers and a librettist were involved in a reworking that reduced the original prologue and five acts to four. Such radical revisions were commonplace in the 18th century, accepted as a way of keeping venerable scores current.

more

Lully's kaleidoscopic masterpiece brought to life

‘Rousset draws alert and vital playing from his crack instrumental ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, while his direction of the unfolding drama is responsive but never overblown’

Lully

Alceste

Judith Van Wanroij, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Ambroisine Bré; Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset

Aparté AP164  150:59 mins (2 discs)

more

Lully: Amadis

Amadis represents something of a new trend in Lully’s operas. The subject, selected by Louis XIV, reflects an almost Arthurian world of medieval romance contrasting with the lofty classical subjects he had favoured hitherto. Although Lully was musically set in his ways by this stage, there are some surprising moments, not least in his use of more duets than was customary, scaling heights of expressive richness in those between the captive Florestan and Corisande in Act III.

more

Lully

Amadis
more

Lully: Phaëton • Atrys • Armide

 

more

Lully: Armide

It’s a brilliant idea for François Roussillon’s film of Lully’s 1686 opera to feature a sequence at Versailles, where several of his works (though not this one) were premiered. In the Blu-ray version in particular, the resplendent detail of the lavish palace interiors is astonishingly real; the sight of dancers disporting themselves in the Hall of Mirrors is not something encountered every day.
 
more

Lully; Bellérophon

 

more

Lully: Psyché

Lully’s Psyché started life as a ballet in 1671 with a text master-minded by Molière. Over a period of seven years, it was refashioned into an opera. Completed in 1678, it tells of the goddess Venus’s desire to punish Psyché for her universally admired beauty. Her son, L’Amore (Cupid), dispatched to ruin Psyché’s life, promptly falls in love with her and builds her a palace.

more

dÕAnglebert, Lully & Campra

Raoul-Auger Feuillet’s Chorégraphie, published in Paris in 1700, was the first dance-manual to use symbols, rather than descriptive narratives, to indicate movements. This volume and its two-dozen successors set dances to new music alongside pieces that retained their popularity throughout Louis XIV’s reign: in this recital the ‘modern’ is represented by André Campra and Jean-Henry D’Anglebert, the classic by Lully. Lawrence-King uses a triple harp, with a central, chromatic, course of strings. As ever, he tackles it with confidence and panache, and emerges with all digits intact.
more

Lully: Thésée

An exemplary production. Start with the booklet’s learned but readable essays: these brilliantly set the political scene for Lully’s and librettist Quinault’s invention of the operatic tragédie, which dominated the French stage for a century after Thésée (1675). But tantalising photos and a note on the invisible (to us) dances also make it clear just how much we’re missing in this 2006 remake of the Boston Early Music Festival’s 2001 production, however excellent (and it is). These days, DVD, surely, is the best home for this proto-Wagnerian vision.
more

Lully: Grands Motets

A dramatic account of music that combines grandeur, passion and tedium. Superb blend in the upper voices and clarity of diction entrance. For aficionados this is a significant disc; those less interested in Lully may want to pass. Berta Joncus
more

Arne • Debussy • Duparc • Lully • Ovalle • Obradors • Fauré • Schubert • R Strauss

The Frenchman Gérard Souzay (1918-2004) was undoubtedly one of the greatest baritones of the post-war period, pupil and successor to the great Pierre Bernac, friend of Poulenc, as well as Claire Croiza, Lotte Lehmann and other luminaries. Throughout his career he remained somewhat overshadowed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Nevertheless, many preferred Souzay in Lieder especially, finding his style less mannered and more fluent.

more

Lully Campra Rameau Mondonville Leclair Royer Gluck

Embracing a century of French opera, this collection spotlights the celebrated tragic heroines of Lully, Rameau and Gluck as well as less familiar but no less ‘fatales’ femmes created by Campra, Mondonville, Leclair and Royer.
more

Lully: Isis

Lully’s Isis is one of the composer’s most grandiose tragic operas and one of his most colourful scores. There is a wealth of pictorial detail including the celebrated chorus of ‘tremblers’ typifying the denizens of the chilly north and the inspiration for Purcell’s rather more terrifying ‘chattering’ chorus in King Arthur. The instrumental writing is at times particularly attractive and includes the ear-catching participation of the musette and an affectingly coloured lament for Pan in Act III.
more

Lully: Phaëton

A much reduced version taken from Minkowski’s complete 1993 recording; the second CD adds some of Lully’s comédies-ballets. Fascinating music, often entrancingly performed, but why not the complete opera? George Hall
more
This website is owned and published by Our Media Ltd. www.ourmedia.co.uk
© Our Media 2024