Legros, Haute-contre de Gluck Arias by Laborde, Berton, Trial, Gluck, Gossec, Grétry et al Reinoud van Mechelen (tenor); A Nocte Temporis Alpha Classics ALPHA992 72:19 mins
The Belgian tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen is today’s preeminent advocate of haute-contre singing, featuring a heady, focused falsetto in the high register, blended with more robust, chesty resonances lower down.
Hautes-contre were the toast of the Paris Opera throughout the Baroque era, and Van Mechelen has devised a trilogy of recordings that that explores their artistry through music composed for three celebrated exponents. Already released are albums dedicated to Dumesny (the favourite of Lully) and Jéliot (who inspired Rameau). The final release is devoted to Joseph Legros (1739-93), with whom Gluck had something of a love-hate relationship. Excerpts from the Iphigénie operas and Orphée et Eurydice take centrestage, alongside contributions from leading composers of French opera in the 18th century, captured in Alpha Classics’s lively, radiant recording.
Van Mechelen pays fitting tribute to Legros, focusing on tasteful lyricism and beauty rather than on virtuosic display (his occasional heroic outbursts can sound laboured). He is at his best as the pastoral lover, when the luminous timbre of his high notes glows amid the flutes and reeds of A Nocte Temporis, the superb period-instrument band that he founded and expertly directs.
The music on this album is often poignant and plangent – as much a valediction as a celebration of the haute-contre. Indeed, in arias by Grétry and Gossec you can hear the emergence of the new bel canto style that paved the way for the supremacy of the Italian tenor with his ringing high Cs – a very different animal from the exquisitely refined creature presented by Van Mechelen here.
Ashutosh Khandekar
