Hercule mourant

"Hercule mourant could have no more persuasive performers ... [Véronique Gens] is brilliantly able to bring to life late-French Baroque recitative, with its constantly shifting rhetorical-lyrical style and finding so many beauties in the smallest details ... Top honours, though, go to bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams as Hercules himself ... From his first sentence he imbues Marmontel's heightened lyrics and Dauvergne's commanding vocal phrases with ringing authority ... If you already have some Rameau and Gluck on your shelves, then Dauvergne will prove an interesting middleman".

"Rousset's theatrical pacing is spot-on; Les Talens Lyriques are on fine form in the lithe Ouverture; and dances are played with a keen sense of balletic movement. Véronique Gens's authoritative recitatives convey the swinging emotional fortunes of the anxious Déjanire ... Hercules's bitter shame at his unworthy deceit of his wife at the start of Act 3 is sung commandingly by Andrew Foster-Williams ... Repays investigation".