Stuck & Vashegyi & Orfeo Orchestra - Polydore (CD)

With Jean-Baptiste Stuck's Polydore, György Vashegyi's directing talents alight once again on a French opera from the era between Lully and Rameau. Whist Louis XIV's reign was gradually drawing to a close, his nephew, duke Philippe d'Orléans - due to become regent for Louis XV on the death of the child's great-grandfather, the Sun King - was greatly expanding his own court cultural activities (within which he had a pronounced predilection for Italian music). The Tuscany-born, later-naturalized Frenchman, Giovanni Battista Stuck was a beneficiary of ducal and regental munificence and, given that taste for opera continued at full tilt in Paris after Louis XIV's death in 1715, Stuck was well-placed to prove his worth. His most highly regarded opera is Polydore, a 1720 tragédie en musique with a libretto confected by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin: a mythological tale of Greeks, Thracians and Trojans, interweaving war, family and love, with tragedy brewing up throughout the work. Stuck's vocal, choral and orchestral music infuses Pellegrin's libretto with dramatic power: intense monologues, mournful laments, forceful duets, as well as sweeping choruses and stirring dance music. A splendid follow up to Vashegyi's reading for Glossa of Gervais' 1716 Hypermnestre (and the selection of his grands motets as well)