Les Boréades was the last of Rameau’s tragédies lyriques. Though apparently it went into rehearsal in 1763, the year before the composer’s death, it does not seem to have been performed in his lifetime, and the premiere was a concert performance in Paris in 1770. But like so much French baroque opera, it was not until the. second half of the 20th century that the score of Les Boréades was heard again; it was eventually staged for the first time in Lyon in 1982, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.
Gardiner also made the first recording, based upon the stage performances, but until this latest version, there appears to have been only one further CD version of Les Boréades, which appeared four years ago, though a couple of subsequent stagings are available on DVD.
The plot is rather thin and over-extended – Queen Abaris is in love with Alphise, but is required to marry one of the descendants of Boréas, the god of the north wind, until Apollo intervenes to ensure that everyone can live happily ever after – but the score has such colour and variety that the thinness of the drama hardly seems to matter.
In Les Boréades the solo airs and choruses are interlaced with danced divertissements, in which Rameau allows his aural imagination full rein, and its in those instrumental numbers that György Vashegyi’s performance with the Orfeo Orchestra really comes alive, with brilliant, sharp-focused playing and crisply articulated rhythms that are vividly captured in this recording. The performance has a real sense of authority – this is the sixth Rameau stage work that Vashegyi has recorded (the previous five were released on Glossa) and it’s a dramatic world that he now inhabits with total conviction, as do his singers, led by Sabine Devieilhe as Abaris and Reinoud Van Mechelen as Alphise. Even French baroque sceptics might be converted.
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