Review of the first complete modern performance of Lemoyne's Phèdre

In the past few years fanatics of French baroque and classicist music have been spoiled by the fruitful cooperation between Benoît Dratwicki and György Vashegyi. They appear to stimulate each other artistically, which is gradually leading to better and better performances. Dratwicki’s theatrical and strictly francophone while Vashegyi’s more Pan-European and historical approaches have always been seamlessly integrated into dramatically coherent and musically pleasing productions. Lemoyne’s Phédre proved to be another milestone of their collaboration. Dratwicki chose this excellent opera with his exceptional dramatic taste from the peri-revolutionary repertoire. Nowadays, the oeuvre of the period is generally neglected, since contemporary reports are frequently misleading as to the intrinsic quality of these pieces. Further even the most talented composers (Grétry, Dauvergne, Méhul, Gossec, Lesueur) of the period had to sacrifice musical and dramatic values for the sake of political reasons and vain compromises of popularity. That is why Lemoyne’s oeuvre could fall into complete oblivion, despite its musical merits. Although, his melodic invention is limited and squarely dance-like, the lyrical moments are well-endowed with tuneful material. On the other hand, his thoroughly-composed great tableaux-s almost recall the atmosphere of Cherubini’s Médée. Lemoyne had excellent taste to select the most suitable musical devices to depict tragic moments. He was attracted to the gravest and most ruthless plots of classical literature (Électre, Phèdre, Nephté). His instrumentation is exceptional and he used novel and also seemingly obsolete compositional devices with equal invention. Lemoyne built his scenes and acts with a freemason’s precision, and grabbed every musical opportunity to faithfully support the text. Thanks to György Vashegyi, the performance could even surmount the obstacles of a concert performance. The lines of the excellent soloists, the Purcell-choir and the Orfeo orchestra were perfectly interwoven. The result was dramatically coherent and evoked catharsis. Especially Judith van Wanroij, Tassis Christoyannis and Julien Behr acted and sang impressively. The rediscovery of Phèdre should raise the interest for Électre and Nephté, as well.