“Percé jusques au fond du coeur” (“Pierced to my heart’s depths”) is a tragic proclamation of Le Cid’s voice, at last put to music by “Mr Charpentier, famed for a thousand works that charmed all of France”. This collection of courtly arias, serious songs and drinking songs, played both at the Court of Louis XV and in the inner circles of the French bourgeoisie, is a marvellous maze on the Map of Tendre developed by Charpentier, a poet-musician whose sophistication vies with an irresistible sense of theatricality! Under the direction of Stéphane Fuget, the cream of French vocalists restores the original aura of these gems, with glittering ornamentation.