Rameau: Hippolyte et Aricie Mark Padmore, Anna-Maria Panzarella, Lorraine Hunt, Laurent Naouri, Eirian James, singers; Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, conductor (Erato, 3 CDs)
Even those listeners not ordinarily attracted to Baroque opera will find delights aplenty in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s lyric tragedy, one of the towering theater works of the 18th Century. The expatriate American early-music specialist William Christie makes no bones about Rameau’s importance: “the most revolutionary of composers between Machaut and Debussy,” he writes in an illuminating essay.
Christie’s splendid performance (and it sounds like a real performance, not a studio job) was made in the wake of a live production at Paris’ Palais Garnier by Christie’s period instrument ensemble Les Arts Florissants, chorus and a mostly superb cast of singers. All that’s missing is the danced visual spectacle. Let’s hope Christie can persuade Erato to record a fully staged performance of a Rameau opera on video eventually.
The rising young American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt’s vivid Phedre alone is worth the price of admission. Not only is she fully into the character, but she spins out yard upon yard of flawless vocal embroidery. The other cast members are hardly less accomplished, notably Nathan Berg as the gods Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune, and Eirian James as the goddess Diana.
