Opera in a prologue and five acts (1787)
Libretto by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

After Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Les Talens Lyriques and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles conclude their cycle of French operas by Antonio Salieri with the world premiere recording of Tarare. Often unfairly placed in the shadow of Mozart, his brilliant contemporary, Salieri puts his name here to an authentic masterpiece, on the only libretto ever written by Beaumarchais.

Salieri has a taste for exoticism and transports us, in the manner of Mozart in The Abduction from the Seraglio, to a fantasised Orient seen through the lens of pre-revolutionary Enlightenment philosophy. The indefatigable Christophe Rousset, committed to bringing back to life rare or mysteriously obscure scores, leads a five-star cast: Captain Tarare (Cyrille Dubois), breaks into the home of Sultan Atar (Jean-Sébastien Bou) in order to free his beloved, the slave Astasie (Karine Deshayes).

Behind the amorous plot, we can discern Beaumarchais' indictment which, as early as 1787, depicts the revolt of the people against the tyrannical power of the sultan – so much so that it is surprising that the plot escaped royal censorship at the time! The music embraces the misunderstandings, the plot twists and spectacular scenes of the story to give birth to an opera that looks towards romanticism, interpreted with jubilation by Les Talens Lyriques and Les Chantres of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. Enough to definitively restore Salieri’s name.

Numbered limited edition.

Recorded by Little Tribeca at the Jean-Baptiste Lully Conservatory in Puteaux on November 26, 2018
and at the Cité de la musique-Philharmonie de Paris on 27 and 28 November 2018.

Contains 3 CDs.
Total duration: 02:45:00