Rameau / Dauvergne / Destouches: Queens

Following her acclaimed album Passion (ALPHA 747), Véronique Gens now returns with the ensemble Les Surprises under Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas – this time to celebrate a character role that sits at the heart of French Baroque opera of the 17th and 18th centuries: the queen. "Operatic queens are powerful women, usually torn between duty and passion, possessing a profound, multi-faceted psyche. They run the entire gamut of emotions, equal to the dramatic and theatrical stage effects; above all, however, they demand music that must be alternately of the greatest intensity and the highest refinement," writes Benoît Dratwicki of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, which is involved in this project. One could hardly wish for a better interpreter than Véronique Gens for these musically immortalized female fates – set to music by the most famous composers of their time and by others whom posterity has unjustly forgotten: Rameau, Rebel, Dauvergne, Royer, Desmarest, Salomon, Stuck, Destouches, Francœur, and many others.