The Sixteen, La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy, Jean-Claude Malgoire - Campra: Tancrede (1992)

André Campra (1660 - 1744): Tancrède. Opera in 5 Acts. Performed by: Francois Le Roux (tenor, Tancrède); Daphné Evangelatos (alto, Clorinde); Catherine Dubosc (soprano, Herminie); Pierre-Yves Le Maigat (barytone, Argant); Gregory Reinhart (bass, Isménor); Colette Alliot-Lugaz (soprano, various minor roles); Dominique Visse (male alto, Un Sylvain); Alison Wells, Andrew Murgatroyd, Christopher Royall, Jeremy White (members of the choir with brief solo appearances); The Sixteen (directed by Harry Christophers); La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy; conductor: Jean-Claude Malgoire. Recorded live at a performance of the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, France, in July 1986. Released by Erato Disques (a division of Warner Classics) in 1990 as 2292-45001-2 (2 CDs). Total playing time: 120'02".

André Campra's "Tancrède" is something of a "missing link", connecting the 17th century stage works of Jean-Baptiste Lully and his frustrated rival Marc-Antoine Charpentier with the late baroque works of Jean-Philippe Rameau. "Tancrède" was given its premiere in 1702 and was repeated again and again on the Paris stage. Even in the 1760's, when Rameau's "Les Boréades" had to be abandoned because of the death of the composer, it was Campra's "Tancrède" that the directors of the Paris Opéra chose to put back on stage because of its popularity.

As an opera, "Tancrède" is, of course, dated. Not only does it not reflect the genius of Monteverdi, whose "Combattimento" will always be remembered as the prime musical version of this story, but it also does reflect a lot of the aspects of French baroque opera which many people today find annoying: personalized gods, emotions and a plethora of nymphs and shepherds are brought on to the stage just for the sake of it, it seems, with "divertissements" being interspersed without any apparent motivation. The tragic story of Tancred and Clorinde is altered radically, and the actual fight between the two happens off-stage and is only reported on in the last act. Additional figures are introduced: Argant, a defeated warrior, who loves Clorinde and wants to be avenged on Tancred; Herminie, an associate of Argant's, who is secretly in love with Tancred; and Isménor, a sorcerer, who uses his magic powers to secure Tancred a prisoner (with some weird scenes of "demons flying through the air and breaking the trees") for Herminie. The 12-track prologue is sung almost exclusively by "La Paix" (reminiscent of Monteverdi's prologues?). The accompanying music is typical of the period in France, with the emphasis on flutes and oboes, and in the last Act there are a number of trumpet fanfares.

Jean-Claude Malgoire and Harry Christophers obviously tried to reproduce the effects that Campra had intended. Their choice of singers reflects very much the feeling that Campra had deliberately written for certain performers with comparatively deep voices. Daphné Evangelatos as Clorinde is a full-throated alto, the male parts are genuinely male throughout (with the exception of Dominique Visse as "un sylvain", the only countertenor in the whole affair) - and Catherine Dubosc as Herminie is a truly beautiful soprano, reflecting the directors' estimation that the original singer of the role had a voice "like a nightingale".

As this is, to my knowledge, the only recording of "Tancrède" that has ever been made, it would be fruitless to try to compare it with other efforts, and criticism of the performance would be unfitting - the whole production should, instead, be praised for its very existence. The singers and the orchestra are, for a live performance, very good, the only drop of gall being perhaps the engineering, which captures a lot of stage noise (trampling of feet, etc) and the clapping of the audience, but leaves the singers and orchestra imposed on one another in the centre of proceedings. The enunciation of the singers is very good, and it was very easy to follow them in the libretto provided, although some slight changes seem to have been made "on the night".

Generally, I would say that anyone interested in French baroque music or in the history of opera before Gluck should have no qualms in buying this. It enables one, at a temporal and geographical distance, to attend a fairly unique French-English performance of a work which, although by and large forgotten today, played a not inconsiderable role in 18th century opera tradition.