In his position as the king’s composer, Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) created the opera Persée for Louis XIV. The opera was considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre and was widely recognized as Lully’s greatest work. Filled with dancing, fight scenes, monsters and special effects, this truly spectacular music drama recounts the thrilling story of Perseus, son of Zeus and heroic vanquisher of the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa. More than half a century after its premiere, Louis XV chose “Persée” to open the new Royal Opera House at the Chateau de Versailles, an event that formed part of the celebrations for the future Louis XVI’s marriage to Marie Antoinette.

While Fauré's Requiem is a monument of French sacred music, Gounod's Messe de Clovis is much less well known. It was composed from 1891 onwards as a tribute to Clovis who, like Joan of Arc, had become an iconic figure after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The two works share a reflective and intimate character that gives the impression of a return to the purity of Gregorian chant, although this does not detract from the jubilant character of Fauré's Requiem: "this warm, luxuriant sound leads to an elevation of the spirit", says Hervé Niquet. The work is recorded here in its 1893 version, in an orchestration that uses neither violins nor woodwind; a later version with full orchestra was published in July 1900. O salutaris by Louis Aubert (1877-1968) for soprano, violin, harp, organ and choir and L'Adagio for violin and organ by André Caplet (1878-1925) complete this programme, a co-production with the Palazzetto Bru Zane and performed with fervour by the Concert Spirituel.

François Cosset (c. 1610-1664) composed a proportion of his music for performance in a convent. It is therefore scored for high voices, and this includes the present work - a polyphonic Missa Super flumina Babylonis for six high voices and small complement of period instruments. Interspersed among the Mass movements here are a number of ‘petits motets’ by Lully and others, also for soprano voices, along with a few instrumental pieces.

In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha Classics now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

Charpentier here offers elegant and intimate music that ranges from the delicate to the exuberant, the lyrical, and the dramatic. Most if not all of these pieces were probably written for the musical establishment of the Duchess of Guise, who was Charpentiers patron from 1670 until her death in 1688. The performing forces on this recording consist of five singes, two obligato violins and a continuo ensemble with theorbos the most prominent harmony instruments. While some of he music could conceivably be performed with larger forces, the chamber-like scale of these readings suites the character of the music admirably. Both texts and music suggest private household devotion rather than public liturgy. Texts range from the traditional seasonal Marian Antiphons to anonymous Latin devotional poetry of the Counter-Reformation.

… Niquet casts the three surviving grands motets from strength, with the likes of Stephan Imbodem and Véronique Gens among his other soloists. His conducting is alert, rhythmically buoyant, and attentive to both musical and word values, as the multi-tempo hurdles of “Converte, Domine” show. Details are never lost, but neither is momentum. The choral and orchestral work of Le Concert Spirituel is first-rate, with a precision that doesn’t rule out a refined color palette.

The Canticum Zachariae dates from 1687, and its lovely six-part Benedictus shows Charpentier in characteristically fluent lyrical and contrapuntal form. The four-part Mass—the first of the composer’s eleven settings—which opens simply, extends to six voices in the Sanctus, with the spirited Hosanna extended to double choir. But it is the short Agnus Dei, serenely beautiful, that haunts the memory.

This release offers a liturgical reconstruction of the Vespers office. The five Vesper psalms and Magnificat belong to different periods in Charpentier's life and the six antiphons are by his organist-composer contemporary, Nivers. The reconstruction works well and Le Concert Spirituel, under Hervé Niquet, demonstrates its rapport with Charpentier's music. The vocal sound is fresh and the wide range of musical Affekt shows off a greater diversity of tonal colour.

After Polyeucte (1878), Gounod tackled the operatic genre for the last time in 1881 with what is probably his most ambitious work, Le Tribut de Zamora. The action takes place in ninth-century Spain – from Act Two onwards, on ‘a picturesque site on the banks of the Guadalquivir before Córdoba’. Here Gounod – finally noted more for his neoclassical pastiches (Le Médecin malgré lui and Cinq-Mars) and his ardent Romanticism (Faust and Roméo et Juliette) – was given an opportunity to display his talents as an orchestrator and colourist in an exotic setting. He produced an epic in the tradition of French grand opéra, with numerous ensembles and showpiece airs.

Massenet was not only the composer of Manon and Werther. In the shadow of his stage works slumber many mélodies decked out in subtle and delicate orchestrations, which we are delighted to revive here. These previously unrecorded works have been entrusted to a team of first-rate artists, most of them fervent champions of French poetry and its musical settings.

Marie Jaëll probably represents the most authoritative and accomplished expression of the nineteenth century woman musician. In spite of her coming from the provinces and despite the heavy social restrictions imposed on artists of her gender, she nonetheless succeeded in being recognized as a virtuoso, a composer and as a teacher. Support from her husband – the Austrian pianist Alfred Jaëll – greatly contributed to the positive reception of her initial works for the piano, but it was by herself, armed with her talent and her resolve in the latter part of her life, that she faced up to the Parisian hurly-burly in which she proved herself to be one of its distinctive figures.

Berlioz wrote of Halévy’s La Reine de Chypre (1841): ‘Its success will at least equal that of La Juive. And Wagner added: ‘It is in La Reine de Chypre that Halévy’s new style has appeared with the most brilliance and success.’ So several voices – and those by no means insignificant – have declared this work, written six years after La Juive, to be its composer’s masterpiece. Premiered on 22 December 1841, Halévy’s opera offered the limelight to Rosine Stoltz in the title role: she was the only woman in the cast, for it had been found preferable to isolate her, following her incessant disputes with the other female singers in the company.

In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha Classics now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

Joncières epitomises the Romantic artist fascinated by nobility and grandeur. This is clear from the titles of his works alone: Sardanapale, Lancelot, Le Dernier Jour de Pompéi, Le Chevalier Jean, Dimitri. Listening to the latter, his masterpiece (1876), we realise too that he was a contemporary of Gounod and a champion of Wagner. Dimitri carries on the tradition (begun by Meyerbeer) of spectacular, monumental works. It takes the listener from a monastery near the River Don to a palace in Krakow, then to the castle of Wyksa and finally the Kremlin in Moscow. At the time it was written, Bayreuth, Orange and Béziers were about to turn opera into a popular art with mass appeal.

Two illustrious composers at odds with their Requiem? When, in 1791, a 36-year-old Mozart composed the one that would remain unfinished due to his death, he did so in response to a commission from the eccentric Count von Walsegg. Mozart would never hear his music. At the time, Salieri was at the height of his glory at the age of 41, famed for his operas from Paris and Milan to Rome and of course Vienna, where he was Court Composer and Director of the Italian Opera. Having put an end to his lyrical career, in 1804 he composed his Requiem, which was strictly intended for his own funeral, where it was indeed played - in 1825.