Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Les Danaïdes; Philidor: Les Femmes Vengées

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Antonio Salieri (1752-1825) was a junior colleague of the great reformer of eighteenth-century opera Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787). No one is certain to this day how great a hand Gluck actually had in the composition of the French lyric tragedy Les Danaïdes, but it seems he graciously allowed Salieri to take credit by name for Les Danaides when it successfully premiered in Paris in 1784. Salieri's tragic opera is certainly in the austerely classical style of Gluck.

In times past I have presented recordings of two other operas that are entirely the work of Salieri: the highly successful opera buffa La Locandiera ("The Mistress of the Inn," 1773) on Sunday, January 31, 1999, and another opera buffa, Falstaff (1799) on three occasions in 1994, 1996 and 2014. In all, Salieri composed at least 40 operas during his long career - many more than his supposed rival, Mozart. This particular one, "The Danaids", dramatizes a legend about mass murder in ancient Greece.

The French conductor and baroque specialist Christophe Rousset has given us fine recorded interpretations of operas by Lully and the like. He does his best in classical mode with the Salieri opera. Rousset leads the period instrument ensemble he founded, Les Talens Lyriques and the choral singers of the Centre of Baroque Music of Versailles. Recorded in 2013, Les Danaïdes was released in a deluxe limited edition two CD package through Ediciones Singulares of France.

There's time remaining this afternoon for another French opera of the classical period - a comic opera that sounds like the work of the young Mozart. When he visited Paris with his mother in 1778 Mozart may well have taken in a performance of Philidor's Les Femmes Vengées ("The Avenged Women," 1775). This one hour-long, one act opera comique was so popular and entertaining it held the stage for years after its premiere. Its' plot resembles that of Mozart's later comic masterpiece Cosí fan tutte (1790).

François-Andre Danican Philidor (1726-1795) was an acknowledged chess grandmaster as well as composer. He practically invented the sub genre of opéra comique. What is presumably the world premiere recording of Les Femmes Vengées was released in 2015 on a single Naxos compact disc. Ryan Brown directed the singers and period instrument players of Opera Lafayette, an American musical outfit dedicated to the revival of neglected French repertoire. They staged "The Avenged Women" in 2014 in musically complete form. Philidor's piece was incorporated into their production of Cosí as if it were the third and concluding act of the Mozart opera.