Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Mondonville: Isbe

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Over the Sundays of the two Summer months I like to program lightweight, easy-to-take lyric theater music that complements the listener's laid-back, vacation-time frame of mind. Often I include works that have a bucolic or pastoral element.

Jean-Joseph Cassanea de Mondonville (1711-1772) came along at the end of the century-long period of the flowering of French baroque opera. The period began in the 1660's with the tragedies lyriques of Lully and culminated in the operas of Mondonville's elder contemporary and rival Jean-Philippe Rameau in the 1760's. After Rameau, Mondonville was the most celebrated composer in France. And he was a virtuoso violinist to boot! The French public over time began to turn from the Lullian lyric tragedy to the lighter weight operatic pastorale and the opera-ballet.

Mondonville's Isbe (1742) is styled a pastorale heroique in a prologue and five acts. The French public demanded dance sequences and, like Rameau, Mondonville wrote a lot of excellent dance music for his operas. Isbe is no exception. He also had at his disposal the best singers France could offer for the cast of Isbe. Some of the glory of the French operatic stage in the eighteenth century is recaptured in what I presume is the world premiere recording of Mondonville's pastorale heroique for the Spanish Glossa record label.

The Center for Baroque Music at Versailles has revived many gems of the French baroque operatic repertoire and staged them in the opera theater of Versailles palace. The Centre de Musique Baroque co-produced this Glossa recording of Isbe. The actual recording sessions took place not in France but in Budapest, Hungary in the Spring of 2016 at the Bela Bartok National Concert Hall. Gyorgi Vashegyi directed the period instrument players of the Orfeo Orchestra plus the Purcell Choir, with a multinational cast of nine vocal soloists. A 2016 Glossa release on three compact discs.