Lully
Ève-Maud Hubeaux is graceful, sincere and vocally radiant Isis Ève-Maud Hubeaux, Bénédicte Tauran, Ambroisine Bré, Cyril Auvity, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Philippe Estèphe, Fabien Hyon, Aimery Lefèvre, Julie Calèete, Julie Vercauteren; Chœur de Chambre de Namur; Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset Aparté AP216 154:51 mins (2 discs) Christophe Rousset has restored to us Lully’s Isis, whose only other complete recording is no longer distributed. Isis is classic Lully: when the heroine Io laments her tortures, or when Juno and Jupiter clash, or the chorus thrusts itself forward, Lully binds action to speech with staggering musical ingenuity. Drawing on his all-French cast, Rousset reanimates a wordbook that contemporaries criticised for its longeurs, as well as for dramatising King Louis XIV’s domestic rows.
The action follows Io (the king’s mistress), whose beauty causes Jupiter…
