Stéphane Fuguet on recording Monteverdi and Lully at Versailles along with his ensemble, Les Épopées

Stéphane Fuguet & Les Épopées (Photograph: Pascal Le Mée)

In June 2024, harpsichordist, conductor and director, Stéphane Fuguet and his ensemble, Les Épopées are releasing their recording of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label with tenor Julian Prégardien within the title function. That is the second of the ensemble’s survey of Monteverdi’s operas on disc, they launched Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria in June 2022, and L’Incoronazione di Poppea will comply with in April 2025. In March 2024 the ensemble launched, additionally on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label, the last quantity of their survey of the whole Grands Motets by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Stéphane feedback that each conductor has their very own concepts for L’Orfeo. He’s intensely within the method to declamation on this interval of opera, the actual mixture of melody and textual content in Monteverdi’s recitar cantando (talking via singing). He has heard this music performed nearly as if the singer have been talking, and this willingness to discover is one thing that characterised their recording of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria and continues within the new launch. However there are different areas too, the place the surviving printed supplies don’t give us the entire image, performers must make selections and select their method.

Stéphane factors out that while the rating signifies what devices are for use, the musical materials is just not absolutely written out; in the beginning of the rating there’s a checklist of devices which doesn’t tally with these current within the rating. For instance, in the beginning of the rating, three violas da gamba are talked about, however there may be by no means any music for the three. What to do with them? It’s this hole which supplies performers the house to be artistic. Stéphane provides that because the instrumental writing is often in 5 elements so one might use a kind of damaged consort, having completely different line-ups.

The realisation of the continuo half additionally provides scope and Les Épopées realise it in several methods, making use of the construction of the piece, bringing out completely different textures in response to context, in order that there are moments when Monteverdi appears to have textures that get greater, abruptly completely different to a easy realisation for lirone. Moreover, every part is improvised, Stéphane by no means writes the music down, preserving it shifting and all the time altering.

Stéphane Fuguet (Photograph: Ludek Brany)

A part of the attraction of the opera is the best way that the character of Orfeo is touchingly human, he doubts himself and on the finish turns again towards Euridice, exhibiting an actual human fragility. For the title function, Stéphane was on the lookout for a singer who might do one thing fragile, at completely different moments murmuring and screaming. Stéphane has identified Julian Prégardien for round a dozen years and admires him as a result of while his voice might be very sunny, spherical and emotional, he’s additionally prepared to strive issues out, there aren’t any limits.

I used to be to know what a French ensemble that performs plenty of Seventeenth French music fabricated from Italian declamation in operas like L’Orfeo, however Stéphane turns the difficulty round, mentioning that French declamation comes from the Italian, with the younger Lully listening to Italian opera in Paris and making an attempt to notate it. For Stéphane, Italian opera is the start. He has taught on the Paris Conservatoire for the final 12 or 13 years and performs two or three operas per 12 months with the scholars (some staged, some in live performance) and so they have performed plenty of Italian Seventeenth-century operas by Cavalli, Rossi, Peri and Monteverdi. This has concerned engaged on the recitatives, which he feels are very near speaking. And he factors out that there are extra ornaments in French declamation as the strain can come from these.

In March this 12 months, their fourth and last disc of their survey of Lully’s full Grands Motets was launched. These have been works written for particular events within the Royal Chapel at Versailles, and Stéphane finds one thing slightly theatrical in them. For Stéphane, Lully approaches the music from a place of theatrical oratory, the priest speaking to the folks. Stéphane explains that plenty of the declamation treatises of the interval have been for opera, theatre and church, so a priest’s sermon might use the identical musical/theatrical qualities as singers or actors. What is robust in Lully’s Grands Motets is the largeness of the construction for choir and orchestra, generally setting the textual content homophonically but in addition in a theatrical means. Lully’s method could be very completely different to the opposite composers of chapel music at Versailles, and Stéphane sees Lully’s theatricality as being related on to his tragédies lyriques, and he brings within the analogy of Verdi writing his extremely theatrical Requiem.

Stéphane Fuguet & Les Épopées (Photograph: Pascal Le Mée)

Since July 2020, Les Épopées has been in residence on the Château de Versailles, and the recordings of Lully’s Grands Motets and Monteverdi’s operas are made there, however Stéphane is at pains to level out that the Versailles of Lully’s time was slightly completely different to the Versailles of as we speak. The current chapel was not accomplished till 1710 (it’s the fifth royal chapel to be constructed on the palace). However for Stéphane, the constructing has a really particular acoustic with a protracted reverberation, but the sound is evident and crystalline. It’s not solely completely stunning to the attention and the ear but in addition a really appropriate acoustic for recording Lully’s Grands Motets.

For the common music within the Royal Chapel, comparatively few performers could be used, however for the grander events, when the Grands Motets could be carried out, a bigger group was introduced collectively, a unprecedented union of musical forces, strings (who usually accompanied church music), wind (who usually performed exterior), choir and soloists. For these extraordinary events, Lully places all of them collectively and so they used nearly 100 performers for the recording of Lully’s Te Deum, while within the 18th century there could nicely have been as much as 150 performers.

Stéphane had an ensemble that included some seven trumpets. But additionally youngsters aged 11 to 14, on account of their collaboration with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles which specialises in music of the Seventeenth and 18th centuries. The rest of the choir have been adults, however Stéphane tried to have the kids’s voices on the centre of the sound, creating what he feels was a touching environment. When engaged on the French repertoire, Stéphane considers that ornaments have been added to the rating by the unique performers, however in a means that doesn’t interrupt the road.

Lully’s Alceste carried out within the Cour de Marbre at Versailles in 1674

The Royal Opera at Versailles was not inaugurated till 1770 and previous to then opera was carried out in a wide range of locations. When Stéphane and Les Épopées carried out Lully’s Alceste, they gave it within the Royal Opera, however for the recording, they used the Salles des Croisades, the place they’ve been recording Monteverdi’s operas and their Charpentier disc. Throughout King Louis XIV’s time, opera performances might happen in several places together with the stables and Lully’s Alceste was carried out exterior within the Cour de Marbre, nevertheless it was additionally carried out within the Palace of Fontainebleau and on the Paris Opera, the place Alceste was the primary manufacturing after the corporate moved into the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. So there is no such thing as a definitive solution to carry out the opera as a result of there is no such thing as a definitive location from the interval.

Additionally, Stéphane factors out that there is no such thing as a definitive model of Alceste, the work was way more malleable than it seems. Now we have the unique libretto, which suggests we all know the names of the performers, however no full details about the forces used. For the Fontainebleau performances, the names of the instrumentalists are all wind gamers, however for the performances on the Paris Opera, Lully appears to have created a brand new model the place the oboes usually double the strings. This can be a new concept, earlier than this, scoring tended to be structured, separating strings and wind into blocks. That is what occurred at Versailles and Fontainebleau, however for the Paris Opera performances the sound is just not structured, Lully mixes issues up. So the performers have decisions, and in his model Stéphane is selective generally utilizing solely strings, generally solely wind and generally collectively.

Stéphane finds opera within the first a part of the Seventeenth century, from Monteverdi to Rossi, slightly fascinating as the concept of bel canto appears to be creating, recitative tends in the direction of speaking with a higher emphasis on arias in order that the later 18th-century model of recitative and aria is coming about. The corporate might be releasing their recording of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea in 2025, and can then proceed their exploration of Seventeenth-century Italian opera with Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo which was first carried out in Rome in 1619 and offers with the Orfeo story after the tip of Monteverdi’s opera, the place Orfeo returns to earth and has to cope with the Furies. Additionally of their sights is Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo, which tells yet one more model of the Orfeo story. The work is an Italian opera written for France, premiered on the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris in 1647, and is without doubt one of the earliest operas to be staged in France. Stéphane sees the music as being considerably between Italian and French.

The Palais Cardinal (future Palais Royal, Paris) in 1641 The theatre is to the proper of the picture

Rossi’s Orfeo was staged beneath the patronage of Cardinal Mazarin, the expense of the efficiency was simply considered one of many causes stoking fashionable discontent in opposition to Cardinal Mazarin which quickly broke out into full-scale riot (the Fronde). When Rossi returned to Paris in December 1647, he discovered the court docket had fled Paris and his companies have been not required. Cavalli would additionally come to Paris within the 1660s, however then style turned away from Italian opera in the direction of making a particularly French opera and the Paris Opera (Académie Royale de Musique) was created in 1669. For 2026, the corporate even have Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s 1693 opera Médée of their sights.

On the finish of our dialog, we return to recitative, to French and Italian declamation. When Marin Mersenne revealed his Harmonie Universelle, contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique in Paris in 1636, he wrote that when Italians carry out opera the singers gave the impression to be affected as if actually impact of the character. This felt very unusual to the French, as their expression was extra sq., and predetermined, and there was quite a bit that you would not do. The French view was that you simply wanted to dominate your passions.