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Reviewer: Richard Lawrence
Les Surprises was co-founded by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas in 2010. In what has become a French tradition, the group is named after a stage work: in this case, Rameau’s Les surprises de l’amour. The surprise here is that Bestion de Camboulas has taken a full-blown opéra-ballet and arranged excerpts for a chamber ensemble, with two sopranos and a baritone taking the various principal roles and doing duty for the chorus.
It works very well, though the result, not surprisingly, is more like a cantata than an opera. Les éléments was a collaboration between Delalande (16571726) and his pupil and colleague Destouches (1672-1749). First staged at the Tuileries in 1721, it was performed at the Opéra in 1725 and revived many times. It’s not clear how the labour was divided, but most of the work was probably done by Destouches. In the Prologue, Destiny sends Chaos packing and summons the elements, while reassuring Venus that Cupid’s supremacy is unassailable. Of the four entrées that follow, air and earth don’t get much of a look-in. What remains of the plot in ‘Water’ is obscure but it seems that Leucosie is able to marry Arion through the intervention of Neptune; in ‘Fire’, Cupid descends to save the vestal virgin Emilie from death, allowing her to marry her Valère.
The scoring, as presented, is
delightful: single strings, oboe, bassoon, pairs of flutes and recorders,
percussion and continuo. All get a chance to shine, especially the virtuoso
flute and bassoon in the ‘Air pour les Divinités’, and the oboe duetting with
the soprano in the Prologue. The music itself is always engaging: I was
particularly taken with ‘Brillez dans ces beaux lieux’, a recitative for soprano
and flute analogous to the opening of Handel’s Ode for the Birthday of Queen
Anne. And there’s a beautiful sleep scene in ‘Earth’, quite unlike a Lully
sommeil, the sonorous texture underpinned by a prominent double bass. It
only remains to add that the baritone Etienne Bazola makes an admirable foil to
the excellent sopranos Elodie Fonnard and Eugénie Lefebvre, and Bestion de
Camboulas’s direction from the harpsichord is spot-on. |
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