The Centre de musique baroque de Versailles is starting a new series of its collections of opera arias with Gluck, a great figure in French opera at the end of the eighteenth century.

This anthology, the result of a collaboration between the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and Bärenreiter, aims to make most of the scenes and arias of Gluck’s French operas accessible to a wide audience, in the form of vocal scores, embellished with an introduction on the context and the performers, the dramatic context of the excerpts and the text of each aria, in French and English. This first volume is intended for dessus and grand dessus voices (soprano and mezzo-soprano).----

Christoph Willibald Gluck, born in 1714 in Bavaria, was a native of Bohemia. His first French comic operas, intended for the troupe of French actors at the imperial court, date from his move to Vienna in 1750. The Académie royale de musique in Paris, in crisis since the Querelle des Bouffons, engaged his services in 1774. The prodigious success of Iphigénie en Aulide, followed by the new versions of Orphée et Eurydice (1774) and Alceste (1776), then the rewriting of Armide based on Quinault’s libretto (1777) definitively supplanted the operas of Lully and Rameau at the Académie.

The leading female roles of the Académie royale de musique were divided between the Dessus (tender and sad roles) and the Grands Dessus ("rôles à baguette" or "staff" roles: sorceresses, goddesses or queens). Gluck sought a different type of voice for his heroines, both touching and valiant, which brought together the passionate tenderness of the lovers with the strength of the "rôles à baguette".


Contains:
1. Armez-vous d'un noble courage (Clytemnestre)
2. Hélas ! Mon cœur sensible et tendre (Iphigénie)
3. Par la crainte et par l'espérance (Iphigénie)
4. Par un père cruel à la mort condamnée (Clytemnestre)
5. Adieu : conservez dans votre âme (Iphigénie)
6. Jupiter, lance la foudre ! (Clytemnestre)
Orphée et Eurydice
7. Fortune ennemie (Eurydice)
Alceste
8. Rien n'égale mon désespoir (Alceste)
9. Non, ce n'est point un sacrifice (Alceste)
10. Divinités du Styx, ministres de la mort (Alceste)
11. Ô dieux ! soutenez mon courage ! (Alceste)
12. Je n'ai jamais chéri la vie (Alceste)
13. Ah ! malgré moi, mon faible coeur partage (Alceste)
14. Ah ! divinités implacables ! (Alceste)
Armide
15. Enfin, il est en ma puissance (Armide)
16. Ah ! si la liberté me doit être ravie (Armide)
17. Venez, venez, Haine implacable ! (Armide)
18. Le perfide Renaud me fuit ! (Armide)
Iphigénie en Tauride
19. Ô toi, qui prolongeas mes jours (Iphigénie)
20. Ô malheureuse Iphigénie ! (Iphigénie)
21. D'une image, hélas ! trop chérie (Iphigénie)
22. Je t'implore et je tremble, ô déesse implacable ! (Iphigénie)