Antoine Desmarest was one of the many French composers of Louis XIV’s time who, thanks to the scheming of Lully, were barred from writing full-length operas. Like the others – most notably Charpentier – he bided his time until Lully’s death with small-scale court entertainments and musical celebrations, and La Diane de Fontainebleau is one of these. Composed in 1686 to mark the King’s annual autumn visit to Fontainebleau for the hunting, it sets a text so sickeningly sycophantic that one wonders Louis did not die of embarrassment. Lasting 50 minutes, it divides into three sections, in which we see Diana herself giving thanks to the gods for Louis’s return, then an allegorical figure representing, for some reason, the Tiber, and finally a visit from Sleep, who reminds everyone that the royal eyelids must be getting heavy. I am sure they were.
Actually, Desmarest does as much as can be expected with this material. This, after all, is a composer whose considerable composing talents were recognized from an early age, and the individual components of this piece are certainly written well enough. The music for Sleep is a convincing imitation of the style of Lully’s sommeil music, and the declamatory writing for Diana and her nymphs has a certain nobility, but it all signifies nothing very much, and the pacing of the work is yawningly slow. The performance by a cast of French singers and players almost entirely unknown to this reviewer is pretty without being striking, but one feels that the piece is unlikely to receive another recording. To judge from the photos of musicians in costume, this one seems to have come about as a result of a recent performance at Fontainebleau itself, which no doubt was a very pleasant evening for everyone concerned. In the end, though, its main interest on CD lies in its giving the chance to hear a prospective opera composer trying out his technique. But would it not be more interesting to hear one of the operas Desmarest did get to write after Lully’s death?'