Les fêtes d'Hébé

"Jean-Philippe Rameau, the leading French composer in the same generation as Bach and Handel, came late to opera. He was already fifty when he presented his first work in the genre ... Rameau's music was by his contemporaries regarded as difficult, and one can in many places feel that he was ahead of his time ... There is no showiness, no space for individuality, and the difference between arias and recitatives is small. I don't mean to say that they are uninteresting - it's up to the singers to breathe life into the proceedings, which they do very well here. Still I find that it is the choral and instrumental scenes that carry the drama - and there are a lot of those scenes. The dance scenes are of course of great importance in an opéra-ballet, and there Rameau is in his element ... Admirers of Rameau, or baroque opera at large, can safely invest in this issue".

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"A quarter of a century since William Christie's iconic 1997 Erato recording, an alternative take on 'Les fëtes d'Hébé' is long overdue ... The Orfeo Orchestra play the 'overtoure' with vivacious personality ... Chantal Santon Jeffery's Hébé is by turns petulant, playful and graceful ... The tender Purcell Choir and responsive Orfeo Orchestra combine lyrical talents charmingly ... There are neither the rustic colours nor the engaging characterisations achieved memorably by Les Arts Florissants but Vashegyi and his orchestra cultivate translucent finesse that is in its own way irresistible".