Le Concert Spirituel; Herve Niquet; Marine Lafdal-Franc; Jehanne Amzal; Fabien Hyon; David Tricou; Floriane Hasler; Adrien Fournaison; Veronique Gens; Cyrille Dubois; Helene Carpentier; David Witczak; Thomas Dolie; Judith van Wanroij - Charpentier: Medee

Medee, a tragedy in a prologue and five acts on a libretto by Thomas Corneille, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier's first and last collaboration with the Academie Royale de Musique. The work was premiered on 4 December 1693, when Charpentier was exactly fifty years old and at the height of his career. Louis XIV attended the performance, proving that it was an eagerly awaited event. Yet this sombre drama, which disconcerted the public, was withdrawn after just ten performances, and not heard again until 1976. A specialist in the French repertory and a close associate of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, where he has followed all the advances in research and historically informed performance for thirty-five years, Herve Niquet has endeavoured, in presenting this new Medee, scrupulously to apply all the scholarly findings available to us today.