Les Fetes grecques et romaines, Colin de Blamont's first opera, was a resounding success from the moment it premiered in 1723. A synthesis between the nobility of the tragedie lyrique created by Lully and the more playful tone, with its choreographed divertissements, of the opera-ballet created by Campra, its libretto brings to life the best-known festivals of ancient History. The eloquent Alcibiades distinguishes himself at the Olympic Games, Mark Antony and Cleopatra celebrate the intoxicating Bacchanalia, and the poet Tibullus passionately courts his beloved Delia at the Saturnalia… Valentin Tournet helps us rediscover this masterpiece of the Age of Enlightenment, which for far too long has been overshadowed by its famous contemporaries.

A mysterious opera, an historical piano, two singers, and four instrumentalists. Ensemble Hexameron presents a rich variety of instrumental and vocal music, thus painting a musical portrait of Paris at the dawn of the nineteenth century; a time when different cultures and genres were at crossroads, and when Mozart was yet to be truly discovered as a composer in France.

A mysterious opera, an historical piano, two singers, and four instrumentalists. Ensemble Hexameron presents a rich variety of instrumental and vocal music, thus painting a musical portrait of Paris at the dawn of the nineteenth century; a time when different cultures and genres were at crossroads, and when Mozart was yet to be truly discovered as a composer in France.

Of all the versions, Charpentier’s masterpiece celebrating the glory of Medea is among the most faithful to the grandiose nature of the ancient myth.

Jean-Marie Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus (Tragédie en un prologue et cinq actes, Paris, 1746) provides an excellent opportunity for György Vashegyi, a luxury cast and music scholars at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to revisit the French Baroque operatic canon and emerge with a fresh new take on this established work, the violin virtuoso and composer's single offering for the Paris Opéra.

The French tenor, Cyrille Dubois, returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the Eighteenth Century French operatic repertoire - several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time.

With Jean-Baptiste Stuck's Polydore, Gyorgy 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'Orleans - 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).

‘So Romantique !’ illustrates the ‘profoundly sentimental’ side of French opera from the 1830s to the 1900s, which gradually came to be judged overwrought and was condemned to partial oblivion. ‘I am convinced that this is because the principals of interpretation were lost’, says the tenor Cyrille Dubois.

Following in the footsteps of his elders (Chausson, Bizet, Gounod…), Gabriel Fauré perpetuated the tradition of incidental music to enhance plays and reinforce their dramaturgy. He left behind him several major works that are among the most beautiful pages of this repertoire, sometimes unfairly considered as old-fashioned by some of today's artists. Yet music for the stage is of major interest, especially from the golden age of French music, stretching from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, when live music was very much an integral part of the theatrical creation process. Today, not only do very few authors call upon composers to write music for the stage, but live music has also long since been replaced by the more convenient and, alas, undeniably more economical recording.

György Vashegyi’s new recording of Rameau’s Dardanus superbly demonstrates the Dijon-born composer’s genius, but also the mastery which Vashegyi – with his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir – has acquired in the music of the Late French Baroque. In conjunction with the preparation of a fresh edition for the Rameau Opera Omnia of the May 1744 version of Dardanus (under the aegis of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles), Vashegyi conducts from a score prepared by the composer (and his librettist Leclerc de La Bruère) following the work’s rejection by Paris Opéra audiences in 1739, with the intention of reinforcing the “tragédie”’s dramatic action.