Romantic Heroines from the Revolution to the Empire

Featuring

Guy van Waas
Jennifer Borghi
Les Agrémens
Antonio Salieri
Rodolphe Kreutzer
Christoph Willibald Gluck

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne
Johann Christian Bach
Etienne-Nicolas Méhul
Ferdinand Hérold
Gaspare Spontini

Did you know?

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Cultural Impact

Gaspare Spontini's Olympie, completed in 1819, was seen by Berlioz as a forerunner to his own work, Les Troyens, due to its rich orchestration, varied rhythms, and thundering orchestral explosions.

Compositional Technique

The 'air agité' (agitated aria) in tragédie lyrique, exemplified by Gluck's 'Je t'implore et je tremble' from Iphigénie en Tauride, was designed to highlight lines with great expressive power, often using repetition to build tension.

Composer's Artistic Vision

The French tragédie lyrique genre, though popular, often led to failure for composers who slavishly copied Gluck's 1774 model, as audiences valued originality and individual style.

Recording & Production

This album is a production of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, a center dedicated to rediscovering and promoting French romantic music from 1780-1920.

Compositional Technique

The overture to Salieri's Les Danaïdes features an unusual structure, beginning with a 17th-century French-style Grave and transitioning to an agitated allegro inspired by Italian sinfonias.

Historical Context

This album explores French musical history between 1770 and 1830, a period when Paris was a hub for foreign composers like Mozart, Cherubini, Johann Christian Bach, Salieri, Gluck, and Spontini.

Compositional Technique

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne's Phèdre includes a hypnotic passage, 'Hippolyte succombe,' which synthesizes declamatory spoken theatre with lyrical opera, featuring a dark orchestration of two bassoons, three trombones, and strings.