Glossa is now restoring to the catalogue and within its collection of French Baroque opera, a recording made in Metz in December 2001: Daphnis et Chloé, the work which was to add Joseph Bodin de Boismortier to the roll call of the history of music in a most determined fashion.
Daphnis et Chloé
Gaëlle Méchaly, soprano
Marie-Louise Duthoit, soprano
François-Nicolas Geslot, high-tenor
Till Fechner, bass
Alain Buet, bass
Renaud Delaigue, bass
Arno Guillou, bass
Le Concert Spirituel, choir and orchestra
Hervé Niquet, conductor
Recorded at the Grande Salle of the Arsenal de Metz, France, in December 2001
Engineered by Manuel Mohino Produced by Dominique Daigremont
First performed in Paris in 1747 – a time when the tragédie lyrique, the genre which Lully had brought to its peak, was already in evident decline – Daphnis et Chloé is a pastorale within which lurks a ballet with a bergère storyline, and which is blessed with a plot which, although mythological in content, is of great lightness; this neatly matched the taste of the nobility of the time and even more so that of Madame de Pompadour with its recreation of an idealized pastoral world. From the very beginning the music is reminiscent of that series of rural settings painted by Boucher for the king’s favourite, crammed full of smitten shepherds and besotted shepherdesses jostling for space on the canvas whilst big-bottomed and chubby-cheeked cupids are hanging about in the clouds…
In just a few years time, in 1753, Paris was to become the setting for the flaring up of the notorious Querelle des Bouffons, with the supporters of the French tradition confronting the partisans of the Italian opera buffa. By then the taste for Boismortier’s music had gone stale... until now!
