Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)
dedicated himself principally to composing sacred music for a pious
duchess and a Jesuit chapel. Those works often smolder with inner
embers, making him the musical equivalent of the French Caravaggist
painter Georges de la Tour. His only full-scale opera was a flop (“too
learned,” said the critics), but he also composed several short operas
for the duchess’s entertainments. The most intriguing,
La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers
(The Descent of Orpheus into Hell), has been recorded several times
before, but never as convincingly as in this luminous performance by
Ensemble Correspondances (directed from the organ by Sébastien Daucé),
in which historical scholarship deepens engaged musical instincts.
Top-drawer
early-music chamber singers lead the cast, including the American light
tenor Robert Getchell, affecting as grief-stricken Orphée, and the
French bass Nicolas Brooymans, as malleable Pluton.
The choral and instrumental work is exemplary, everywhere subtle in phrasing and fluid
in embellishment; the nymphs and shepherds lamenting Eurydice’s death
prove heartrending in the restrained articulation of their dissonances.
This emotionally wrenching piece ends enigmatically, with Orpheus
recovering Eurydice but just setting out on his journey with her back to
the land of the living — a trip we know will be bumpy — while the
Shades dance a ghostly goodbye.
(James M. Keller)
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