page_title: Dardanus (Raymond Leppard recording)
section_title: Reviews
hierarchical_section_title: Dardanus (Raymond Leppard recording) / Critical reception / Reviews
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Église Notre-Dame-du-Liban - Paris V
context_page_description: Dardanus is a 119-minute studio album of Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera, performed by a cast led by José van Dam, Michael Devlin, Veronique Dietschy, Christiane Eda-Pierre, Georges Gautier, Roger Soyer and Frederica von Stade with the Chorus and Orchestra of the National Theatre of the Paris Opera under the direction of Raymond Leppard. It was released in 1981.
context_section_description: Lionel Salter reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in May 1981. Noting that Rameau's 1739 and 1744 versions of Dardanus both had strengths and weaknesses, he agreed with Leppard that when it came to compiling a working edition of the piece, "conflation [offered] the best solution". This said, he was not altogether happy with how Leppard had gone about his task. Some beautiful music had been discarded, and some awkward key-sequences had been introduced. About the performance that Leppard had elicited, on the other hand, there was little negative that could be said. Christiane Eda-Pierre was "radiant" as Vénus, lovely in her dea ex machina arrival in Act 4, florid in her virtuoso climactic aria. Frederica von Stade was almost as impressive, singing "intelligently and expressively" although challenged by a tessitura uncomfortably high for her and sometimes singing with a more pronounced vibrato than usual. Of the male singers, the best was José van Dam as the magician Isménor, "noble in tone, with a fine, ringing high register, and most impressive in his invocation of the supernatural powers". Georges Gauthier was courageous in the stratospheric title role, even if its demands inevitably bleached some of the colour out of his voice. Michael Devlin's Anténor had a soldierly sturdiness, although he was not as eloquent as Gérard Souzay had been when singing one of Anténor's arias on a 1964 recital album. The one grave disappointment in the cast was Roger Soyer as King Teucer. His voice was "dry and worn", his important Act 1 duet with Devlin was "singularly ineffective" and he conveyed "no suggestion of terror or urgency" when announcing the arrival of a Godzilla-like sea monster. All of the soloists sang with flawless enunciation; they also made "a very fair shot at the unfamiliar technique of French baroque ornamentation". The chorus sang as though from the heart. Conducting, Leppard imparted "his characteristically alert rhythmicality" to the orchestra, making the opera "tingle with life right from the outset". Salter acknowledged that Dardanus was obscure, and that its libretto was a fanciful one - a tale of ill-starred lovers, sorcery, knight-errantry and divine intervention. But he concluded by advising his readers to "sample its riches".
  Eric Salzman reviewed the album on LP in Stereo Review in April 1982. He did not share Salter's reservations about Leppard's editing. Leppard, he wrote, had "succeeded in arranging this difficult and trouble-ridden work so that it functions". Of the soloists, José van Dam was probably the best, but Frederica von Stade and Michael Devlin were strong too; the one disappointment was Georges Gauthier. But the true stars of the album were Leppard and Rameau himself. Leppard's conducting was "brilliant, clear, precise - and yet moving." From his soloists, his chorus and his orchestra alike, he had elicited "a certain liveliness, an articulation and intensity ... that [were] very engaging." He had "helped both singers and musicians to find a legitimate-sounding style without sacrificing to antiquity anything in the way of vigour, pathos, mystery or enchantment". As for Rameau, Salzman exhausted the thesaurus in hymning him to high heaven. His score was wonderful, superb, graceful, charming, delightful, a masterpiece of orchestration and, he insisted, "always real and powerful stage music", lyric drama that could be spoken of in the same breath as that of Monteverdi, Mozart, late Verdi or Wagner. Well recorded and beautifully balanced, the album was "an essential documentation of Rameau's art".
  Nicholas Anderson reviewed the album on silver disc in Gramophone in May 1995. Rameau's 1739 and 1744 versions of Dardanus were so different, he thought, that conflating them had given to rise to problems which Leppard had been unable to solve convincingly. His cuts were so severe - omitting, for instance the prologue and the concluding elegiac chaconne - that the music which he had left out would have filled most of a third CD. He had also added "an organ which played no part in Rameau's orchestra" an
caption: Paris's Maronite Catholic church of Our Lady of Lebanon, where the album was taped
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