Before and after the turn of the 17th century, hundreds of collections of Airs sérieux et à boire were published in Paris. In the first of a new series for their old label, Les Arts Florissants present a varied selection of these airs: mostly ensemble pieces, with a sprinkling of solo numbers. Two violins and a gamba support five singers, abetted by a continuo group comprising theorbo and harpsichord.

Of the 20 tracks, 12 are by Michel Lambert, the singer and teacher who became Maître de musique de la chambre du Roi in 1661; his daughter married the all-powerful Lully a year later. All but the last, Tout l’univers obéit à l’Amour, are sérieux indeed, lamenting lost or hopeless love. One of the most moving is Iris n’est plus, sung with great intensity by Cyril Auvity. Chantez, petits oiseaux, to words by Lully’s librettist Philippe Quinault, is lightened by delightful counterpoint from the theorbo of Thomas Dunford. Jugez de ma douleur, a man’s reproach to another Iris, is oddly split between soprano and tenor; the seal is set on the lover’s misery by a heartfelt postlude on the gamba.

In fact the instrumental contributions are superb throughout. Le doux silence by Honoré d’Ambruys has an interlude for the gamba, which then vies with the singer in the ornate second verse: it’s all beautifully played by Myriam Rignol. But the lighter numbers are less successful. Couperin’s Epitaph of a Lazy Man is brief and amusing but the other items make you feel as though you are eavesdropping on a party to which you haven’t been invited. Charpentier’s interludes for Molière’s Le mariage forcé end with raucous laughter; the New Chamber Opera’s version is both more restrained and more entertaining (ASV, 4/98). It would perhaps have been better to issue a DVD of one of the semi-staged concerts that Les Arts Florissants have been touring, to be watched after a good dinner: apropos of which, somebody should have informed the German translator of the texts that claret is not a white wine.