Hervé Niquet’s long-term project to breathe new life into the French Baroque operatic tradition yields another exciting new discovery with the tragédie lyrique composed by JeanBaptiste Lully in 1680, Proserpine.
Hervé Niquet, conductor
Salomé Haller, Proserpine
Bénédicte Tauran, La Paix
Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Cérès
Blandine Staskiewicz, Aréthuse, Cyané
Hjördis Thébault, La Victoire
Cyril Auvity, Alphée
François-Nicolas Geslot, Mercure
Benoît Arnould, Ascalaphe
Marc Labonnette, Jupiter, Crinise
Pierre-Yves Pruvot, La Discorde
Joao Fernandes, Pluton
Le Concert Spirituel, choir and orchestra
Recorded in Versailles and Poissy in September 2006 and November 2007
Engineered by Manuel Mohino
Produced by Dominique Daigremont
Following a three year gap in their collaboration, JeanBaptiste Lully and librettist Philippe Quinault had reunited to create Proserpine, a reflection of the increasing maturity of Lully as a composer as much as the mastery of Quinault in penning lyrical dramas centred on mythological stories. Three centuries after the first performance in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel pay tribute to the genius of Lully with a new recording.
Proserpine helps to place in context the two other tragédies recently released by Niquet and his team – Destouches’ Callirhoé and Marais’ Sémélé, both written a generation after Lully’s masterpiece. Together with a cast of top soloists well-versed in the demands of French Baroque singing and with his incomparable Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet once more conjures up a dramatic feast.
