If you think of Gluck exclusively as a purveyor of the exalted, serene, classical emotions of an Orfeo or Iphigenie en Tauride, you should perhaps try this pair of discs, which presents virtually a different composer. La rencontre imprevue (or Les pelerins de la Mecque—Mozart knew it as Die Pilger von Mekka) is a French opera comique, a genre in which Gluck arranged and composed several works from the late 1750s, when everything French was fashionable at the Viennese court; this was the last of them, written in 1764, two years after his first 'reform' opera, and also the longest, in three acts; music for an entire evening. It is an entertaining piece, written in a generally simple style—the songs are mostly just tune with accompaniment, the tunes short-breathed and four-square, the harmonies often little more than tonic-and-dominant sequences—but there is a good deal of humour in it, some of it hearty, even a shade coarse and peasant-like, some of it more intellectually sophisticated. The story is of the same family as Mozart's Die Entfuhrung or Haydn's L'incontro improviso, where a pair of lovers, long separated, try to escape together, are caught and sentenced but ultimately spared. Here the lovers are Ali and Rezia; Ali, although thinking his beloved to be dead, remains steadfastly faithful in spite of the blandishments of a variety of tempting maidens, while she of course resists the Sultan's importunities.
Being set in an oriental context, the work begins with a 'janissary'-style overture, very jauntily done here. In Act 1 there is an exotic aria, set largely in octaves, for the Calender, spiritedly sung by Gilles Cachemaille, using mock language (like Mozart's Osmin, he keeps resuming his aria, ignoring interruptions), and then follows another for him, ''Les hommes pieusement'', familiar through Mozart's piano variations on a slightly more civilized version of its theme. The most appealing piece is the graceful aria for Ali, sung here by Guy de Mey, a fair stylist but not always pleasing in tone or control, which at once places him as a more serious character, with its accompaniment enriched with english horn and bassoon. The Second Act sees the parade of alluring young women, singing pretty, charming, light-textured songs; Ali's response, although an air parodie, again injects a note of real feeling, in spite of its hints of parody (do I detect an allusion to ''Che faro''?), with its fuller textures and its chromatic hints. The first reunion of Ali and Rezia—when he still believes her dead—is another touching piece: there is clever casting here, with Lynne Dawson's warmer, emotionally more potent voice making a fine effect after the relatively lightweight women's voices heard earlier. Then the last act includes a scene for Vertigo, executed with style by Jean-Philippe Lafont, imitating military noises and rhythms, rushing torrents of water and purling streams—taking off some of the devices of Italian opera (as the texts, about Italian musicians, makes clear at one point).
The piece is quite enjoyable, but I would not suggest this is high-quality music; some, frankly, is banal and commonplace, though there is certainly enough appealing music to hold the interest by and large. The smaller roles are all very capably and spiritedly sung. John Eliot Gardiner, with a decent but not outstanding orchestra, gives as lively and pointed a reading of the score as one could hope for. The recorded quality is good, and the note about the work in the booklet, by Bruce Alan Brown, is a model of its kind.'