French Baroque opera between Lully and Rameau is exciting much interest these days. For too long ignorance has bred contempt. Now, as the enthusiasm of continental audiences grows, especially in France, new 'masterpieces' are coming to light and changing this perception. Among the post-Lullian composers, Marin Marais, Andre Campra—a Deutsche Harmonia Mundi recording by La Petite Bande of L'Europe galante (1697) has been reviewed in these pages (2/91)—and Andre Cardinal Destouches were reckoned the finest in their day. Certainly we know now that without Marais's Alcyone (1706, revived in 1719 and, notably, 1730) and Monteclair's Jephte (1732), Rameau might have composed Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) very differently. Alone among them, Marais was a disciple of Lully and a member of his orchestra, though all of them had close associations with Lully's Academie Royale de Musique after his death.
Marais has been associated almost exclusively with the bass viola da gamba, an instrument which he played and for which he composed with unmatched perfection. The remarkable new Gerard Depardieu film, Tous les matins du monde (in which we hear, though do not see, Jordi Savall playing), is likely to reinforce that impression, and, at the same time inspire people to discover more about him. They will not be disappointed. His long apprenticeship at the Opera is reflected in every scene of Alcyone, his chamber musicianship in every instrumental introduction and concertante line.
Alcyone was not Marais's first opera, though because of the tempest scene (Act 4 scene 4) it became his best known. Its novelty, together with Marais's influence as the chief conductor at the Opera, led to its inclusion in the 1707 revival of Lully's Alceste; Campra quoted it to great effect in Les fetes venitiennes in 1710 and the following year it was performed as a 'party piece' for Louis XIV and the court. Ironically, the continuing enthusiasm for the tempest in music and literature has tended until now to obscure the dramatic and musical quality of opera as a whole.
For the text, Marais turned to the fashionable Antoine Houdar de la Motte (librettist of L'Europe galante), who produced a finely crafted livret based on the eleventh book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, dealing with the story of Alcyone and Ceyx, whose happiness provokes the gods into parting them (Alcyone's name provides the origin of the term 'halcyon days', the period of calm around the winter solstice). La Motte embellished the story with a descent to the Underworld and the intervention of a malevolent magician (Phorbas), a deus ex machina (Neptune), and a rival lover (Pelee), the last sung here with great sensitivity and passion by Philippe Huttenlocher. But it is the depth and subtlety with which Marais and La Motte constructed the drama and drew their characters that makes it such a memorable work.
With this recording, Marc Minkowski emerges as a polished interpreter of French Baroque music. Having served his apprenticeship with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, Minkowski founded his own group, Les Musiciens du Louvre, which has risen steadily in popular esteem. Many of the singers and players work in Paris with both conductors in an atmosphere akin to that in London over the last 15 years. Jerome de La Gorce, the noted authority on opera of this period and Marais in particular, prepared the text and score and wrote the excellent accompanying note.
Minkowski's strengths are many: vigour, discipline and a keen sense of rhetoric, but most of all sensitivity to the subtleties in the score. The Ouverture, with its minor-key twist, immediately proclaims these qualities. In the short space of the Prologue Minkowski gracefully fields a wide variety of textures—choirs of instruments in alternation, airs with ensembles of concertante instruments and juxtapositions of petit and grand choeur, virtuoso bass writing (with particular praise for the basson playing in track 9, though the tempo—here and elsewhere in the first two acts—seems a bit rushed).
Once begun, the opera moves quickly, and by introducing the anguished Pelee and the insinuating Phorbas (sung with great effect by Vincent Le Texier) at the very beginning, there is no escaping the tragic element. Before the wedding of Alcyone and King Ceyx takes place (scene 3), the guileless king addresses an air, ''Partage, cher ami, les transports de mon ame'', to Pelee. In the intricate vocal trio that follows, each of the three characters express their emotions. In both the delectable little divertissement and the wedding, solemnly conducted by the High Priest (Bernard Deletre) to the counterpoint of a concertante oboe, minor keys intrude ominously and, indeed, the First Act ends dramatically with lighting and the fiery destruction of the palace. The Second Act begins in the lair of Phorbas, from where the magician and his assistant, Ismene, propose to conduct Ceyx—who is seeking to appease the gods—to the Underworld. While Gilles Ragon as Ceyx succeeds admirably in conveying his uncomprehending misery, the conspiratorial effect of the magicians' duet is gripping. Whether these and other delicately recorded passages of monologue and duet—or, for that matter, the exquisite chamber-music quality of the introductions and entr-actes—would succeed as well in an opera house will be known to those lucky enough to have attended the Paris performances a year ago.
Act 3 takes place at the port of Trachis, from where Ceyx is setting sail for Claros. The music of the sailors' divertissement preceding their departure will bring smiles to listeners as they recognize it as the precursor of the popular Christmas carol Masters in this Hall. Marais contrasts the festive tone with ''Reign Zephyrs'', a choral plea for a safe journey sung by a chorus of women's voices with recorders and continuo, later joined by men's voices and strings. In the following scene, Alcyone, powerfully sung by Jennifer Smith, a stalwart of most of the major Lully and Rameau revivals of recent years, expresses her determination (accompanied by a trio of violin, viol and theorbo) to follow Ceyx, who expresses fear for her life, unaware that it is in fact he who is facing grave danger, at sea. Smith's singing of ''Il fuit... il craint mes pleurs, ah! cher epoux, arreste...'' is ravishing—and it seems right that Alcyone faints.
She starts the next act out in the Temple of Juno, with a lament, ''Amour, cruel amour, sois touche par mes peines'', where chamber-music scoring for two violins, viol and theorbo equals the best of Francois Couperin and must certainly have inspired Rameau, who was in Paris in 1706 and undoubtedly heard Marais's opera. The Priestess's appeal to Juno as the defender of marriage, sung by Veronique Gens, is echoed at a distance by a chorus of women, recorders and muted violins. Jean-Paul Fouchecourt's Morpheus lulls her with a sommeil before administering a coup de foudre—''Volez, songes, volez; faites-luy voir l'orage qui dans ce meme instant luy ravait son epoux''—transforming the stage into a stormy sea in which a ship is sinking. Minkowski startles his listeners with this wondrous tempest: the violins scream on their E strings, the bassoons, bass violins, bass viols and double-basses thunder up and down in their lowest octave, while the loosely-strung drums beat terrifying crescendos. The chorus joins in and Morpheus, disguised as Ceyx, bids a last farewell to the helpless Alcyone. Marais's tempest is not, after all, overrated, though its context in the opera—following the repose of the sommeil and preceding Alcyone's deeply affecting soliloquy, which closes the act and is cast with infinite invention by Marais on a ground bass—makes it especially arresting.
Like the previous act, the final one begins with chamber music. Nowhere does Minkowski demonstrate the maturity of his musicianship better than in his pacing of the delicate but emotionally charged dialogue between Alcyone and Pelee. The appearance of Ceyx's father Phospore, perched on a star, bringing reassurances that Alcyone and Ceyx will soon be reunited, offers only momentary respite as Alcyone sings joyfully to a flute and theorbo. But upon seeing Ceyx lying on the shore, Alcyone believes him dead and stabs herself. A passacaille worthy of Lully himself follows, but it remains for the deus ex machina to save the tragedy and resolve the musical-dramatic tensions which have held the listener rapt from beginning to end.
Marais's Alcyone, as much as any opera of the French Baroque, deserves to find its way into today's opera houses and eventually into the repertory. In the meantime, Minkowski's interpretation merits accolades and the performance popular acclaim.'