Le Concert Royal de la Nuit
After the Ballet Royal de la Nuit, danced by Louis XIV on 23 February
1653 in the Salle du Petit-Bourbon, Paris
Reconstructed by Sébastien Daucé
Ensemble Correspondances/Sébastien Daucé
rec. January-February 2015, MC2, Grenoble
HARMONIA MUNDI HMC952223.24 [77:24 + 76:38]
Everyone knows that Louis XIV of France was nicknamed "The
Sun King", but this recording recreates the very event where the legend
began. The Sun King title grew to describe the magnificence with which the
adult King surrounded himself but not so many people know that the nickname
first emerged when he danced the part of The Sun in a ballet, staged in Paris
in 1653. In this release, Ensemble Correspondances do us the inestimable good
turn of recreating that musical night, and it's a must-hear, both for
musical and historical reasons.
The ballet was commissioned by the King himself, and traces the watches of
the night, from dusk to dawn, via various allegorical and mythical figures,
culminating in the arrival of the sun at dawn, as danced by the 15-year old
King himself. Most of the dancers were of a similar age to the King, so the
evening carries an unmistakeable air of renewal and revival, coming as it
did after the final defeat of the Fronde rebellion.
Of all the composers involved, we can only identify one with certainty, Jean
de Cambefort. He wrote only a very small proportion of the music. Cavalli
and Rossi have been linked to it, too, but with less confidence. The names
of the rest have been lost, subsumed into the greater glory of the Sun King's
enterprise. Either way, much of the instrumental music was lost soon after
the performance. Sébastien Daucé himself has done a great job of musical archaeology
to recreate the score as closely as possible to what might have been heard
that night. It's so convincing and winning that you never question
its authenticity.
It being a ballet score, most of the numbers are purely orchestral, but the
band of instrumentalists in Ensemble Correspondances is fantastic. They are
so utterly immersed in the sound-world of the French Baroque that, at times,
it’s easy to forget that you’re listening to 21st century
musicians. There is, for one thing, a marvellously juicy quality to the string
playing, evident from the very opening bars. This places the listener unmistakably
in the France of the late 17th century. That string tone is supplemented
by slightly reedy winds, swaggering percussion and an assertive continuo troupe
that underpin everything brilliantly. The instrumental dances are repeatedly
delightful, with special touches too numerous to name, but I really enjoyed
the recorders and piquant musettes of the pastoral hunt scenes, as well as
the piccolos and growling basses of the Hercules scene. The dream sequences
in the fourth part are also beautifully evocative, and the climactic appearance
of the sun at the end carries off all the weight of expectation.
There are, however, several vocal moments, and the singers of the Ensemble
are equally excellent. They are so good because they immerse themselves totally
inside what the project is trying to accomplish, often sacrificing their own
fame in the service of the whole. As Night, for example, Lucile Richardot
has a beautiful, limpid quality to her voice that fits the bill perfectly,
but then you never hear her again except for the Venus scene. Likewise, Renaud
Brès demonstrates all the fruity elegance of French bass singing at its finest,
but he only appears for a few minutes as Hercules. It is, in fact, in the
Venus and Hercules scene that the music comes closest to being opera, but
primarily it’s a collection of vignettes rather than a single narrative,
and it’s, therefore, more uniquely interesting for that reason. The
choruses are a model of Gallic refinement.
Harmonia Mundi also get a special gold star for their presentation, which
is on the level of Jordi
Savall's special projects for Alia Vox. The two CDs are enclosed
within a hardback book which contains a series of top-notch historical essays
(in several languages, including English), together with musicological notes,
a detailed run-down of the scenario and many illustrations, both of the scene
of the ballet and of the contemporary royal court. You also get the full sung
texts with translations.
So this release is a welcome piece of musical archaeology that brings back
from the dead one of the most famous ballet sequences of the ancien régime
whose details had, nevertheless, been long forgotten. Both fascinating and
compelling, this is a release of equal musical and historical worth.
Simon Thompson
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