MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER: La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers ‒ Ensemble Correspondances / Sébastien Daucé [Full performing artist below] ‒ Harmonia mundi HMM 902279, 54:52 (8/25/17) [Distr. by PIAS] ****1/2:
Most music lovers, even those who gravitate to the French baroque, are probably unfamiliar with Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s stage works. But then the rehabilitation of Charpentier’s image dates only to the 1950s, when a recording of the composer’s now-famous Te Deum H146 was an instant hit, its fame compounded when the stirring prelude was adopted as the signature theme by the European Broadcasting Union. In fact, the Te Deum and the lyrical Messe de Minuit pour Noël may be two of the baroque’s greatest musical hits, but they’re about all that many lovers of the baroque hear from Marc-Antoine Charpentier. I know and admire a handful of others of his many sacred works; his stage works were a closed book to me as well.
I’m not excusing myself, but the oversight is understandable. Charpentier worked at a time when Lully dominated French opera and jealously guarded his position at the top of the musical pecking order. Following the older composer’s death, Charpentier finally mounted an opera for Lully’s Académie Royale de Musique. Alas, the tragédie en musique Medée, did not please the critics, and the opera remained his only contribution to the venue and genre that were Lully’s near-exclusive domain.
However, Charpentier contributed much to musical theater in France. When Molière had a falling out with Lully, Charpentier became the playwright’s composer of choice, supplying incidental music for such classics as The Imaginary Invalid. His other important contribution to musical theater in France was a series of divertissements, or chamber operas, most of which were composed for the Duchess of Guise, the last in a line of powerful French nobles. Charpentier was in the Duchess’s employ for twenty years, creating a goodly number of pastorales and classical tragedies, including two on the myth of Actaeon and Diana. His last chamber opera written for the Duchess was La Descente de Orphée en Enfers.
If you’re familiar with the tale of Orpheus as recounted by Ovid, you know the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Orpheus loses his wife Eurydice to the Underworld; Pluto lets him lead her back to terra firma but only if he refrains from looking back at her as the pass upward; he does, and he loses her again. As opera fans know, Gluck, in his version of the Orpheus myth, tacks a happy ending onto the sad tale: Orfeo decides to kill himself so he can join Eurydice in Hades, but Amore stops him. In tribute to Orfeo’s steadfastness, Amore restores Eurydice to her husband. Time for a celebratory ballet! The plotting of Charpentier’s version is different from either. After the first act, we don’t see Eurydice again. The second act is all about Orphée’s winning the hearts of the denizens of Hades. As in other versions of the tale, Orphée (with the advocacy of Proserpine, queen of the Underworld), manages to soften Pluto’s heart and win his wife’s release. But instead of the journey back to earth, La Descente ends with paeans to Orphée’s artistry from a chorus of blessed spirits, damned souls, furies, and—for an extra dash of local color—Ixion, Tantalus, and Tityus, famous for their hellish punishments (Ixion strapped to a fiery wheel, Tantalus always in reach of food and drink he can’t enjoy).
It’s possible that Charpentier’s work is incomplete or that the final act has been lost, but the current ending sounds so definitively final that probably an alternative interpretation correct. Thomas Leconte, in his notes to this recording, states it eloquently: “Charpentier’s Orpheus…embodies the full creative force that the power of love can elicit, and finally, in a humanistic ideal, also represents the perfection that the human soul can attain through art.” Still, the end of the opera doesn’t fully satisfy. In place of the expected (or in Gluck’s case, unexpected) turn of events, we’re left with a feeling of wistful, only semi-blissful stasis, Hades’ inmates sorry to see Orphée leave, Orphée himself mum the entire last scene, awaiting an unknown fate.
Scored for a modest chorus (composed of the soloists) and orchestra of strings and recorders, the work makes a gentle yet commanding statement about its subject matter. While Gluck’s portrayal of the Furies with their implacable shouts of “No!” is powerfully dramatic, Charpentier’s vision of Hades is more sedate, as one might expect. Yet the composer is almost as effective in the scene where Orphée wins over his adversaries; Robert’s Getchell as Orphée is especially compelling here. The first act descends quickly from joy to dolor, and again Charpentier marks the trajectory effectively: the death of Eurydice is affecting, even if the entry of the heart-broken shepherds (Entrée de Nymphes et de Bergers désespérés) is an incongruous hustle and bustle that doesn’t sound much like despair. This and the other purely instrumental numbers are unfailingly charming, though, colored by two bubbling soprano recorders. Playing original instruments, Ensemble Correspondances under Sebastien Daucé’s direction provides perfectly gauged accompaniments to the expert singing.
La Descente was not composed as a star vehicle but as an ensemble piece, tailored to the singers in the Duchess’s employ, giving all of them a chance to shine in solos and ensembles. The finest compliment I can give the liquid-voiced singers of Ensemble Correspondances is that each delivers their solo numbers as primus inter pares, while the ensembles are sung with a sensitive unanimity. Charpentier’s La Descente de Orphée en Enfers is a lovely work, lovingly presented here, and that includes the appropriately intimate recording. Even the cleverly conceived cover photo is perfect. Now, Ensemble Correspondances, what does Charpentier have to say about Actaeon and Diana?
—Lee Passarella
Performing Artists:
Robert Getchell , haute-contre (Orphée) / Caroline Weynants, dessus (Eurydice) / Violaine Le Chenadec, dessus (Daphné) / Caroline Dangin-Bardot, dessus (Œnone) / Caroline Arnaud, dessus and Lucile Richardot, bas-dessus (Aréthuse / Proserpine) / Stephen Collardelle, haute-contre (Ixion) / Davy Cornillot, taille (Tantale) / Etienne Bazola, basse-taille (Apollon, Titye) / Nicolas Brooymans, basse (Pluton) /
