Arnaud Marzorati and his singers, 'Les Lunaisiens', are unrivalled specialists in the popular French songs of the past centuries. Here they tackle two great monuments of 19th-century France: the writer Honore de Balzac, and songwriter Pierre-Jean de Beranger, a poet and composer highly famed in his day for his genius in depicting society in all it's social diversity, from the poorest to the very richest. During this period Balzac was also making his sharply drawn portrayals of more than 5,000 characters in the course of his great opus of around 90 novels bearing the overall title of The Human Comedy. Here the 'Lunaisiens' have recorded musical settings of a wide selection of witty and often satirical verse, reflecting all the Parisian themes that obsessed Balzac: social climbing, money and greed, corruption, love and betrayal. With the participation of Lucile Richardot and Cyrille Dubois, Arnaud Marzorati and his ensemble give an enthusiastic account of Balzac's extraordinary human menagerie. As Marzorati concludes: 'The Human Comedy was greatly inspired by song.'

The air de cour has been with me for almost as long as I’ve been playing the flute... For me, it is one of the finest creations of French art. I have assembled these airs from the second half of the seventeenth century to complete the exploration begun with Et la fleur vole (early seventeenth century, ALPHA314) and À l’ombre d’un ormeau (early eighteenth century, ALPHA342),’ says François Lazarevitch in the introduction to this new release.

‘I am particularly interested in combining the qualities of sound and breathiness of the voice and the flute.’ Love songs, dance tunes, and brunettes on pastoral themes follow one another in a program at once moving and erudite. These miniatures are magnificently interpreted by the two outstanding singers who join the instrumentalists (lute, flute, musette, harp, viol) of Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien: the soprano Julie Roset and the mezzo Lucile Richardot.

Opera was in its infancy when Monteverdi wrote L’Orfeo, only six years after the first example of a drama set wholly to music had been performed in Florence. He brought to the work a revolutionary synthesis of text, staging and musical architectural that virtually defined the future of opera.

John Eliot Gardiner first conducted L’Orfeo at the Proms in London in 1967. For decades he has been at the forefront of Monteverdi performance and scholarship and in 2017, the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi’s birth, and the 50th anniversary of his own first performance of the opera, he undertook the crowning achievement of his association with the composer, an odyssey to perform all three surviving full-length operas. This performance of L’Orfeo was given at the historic Teatro La Fenice in Venice – which has seen triumphant premieres of works by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and many others – in a critically acclaimed semi-staged production.