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| Concerts |
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| Château Bosmelet, Normandy, France – 2005 |
French music (Marais, Lambert) and poetry (Racine)
"…There is a level of intensity to this music-making which would be arresting whatever the context….Yet however polished are the details of the performance, it is the whole which leaves the most lasting impression. It is a performance which has been lived in, and confidently, invites us, as listeners, to do likewise. The response of the audience is predictably ecstatic…" |
| Early Music Review – October 2005 |
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| Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music 2004 |
| "The four singers and six players gave an excellent concert…soprano Claire Lefilliâtre was particularly effective, with her clean, direct and slightly mezzo-ish tone and expressive use of hand gestures (a feature of all the singers). The accompaniments were impressive, including some imaginative, and generally sensitively unobtrusive, deconstructed post-modern percussion." |
| Early Music Review - August 2004 |
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Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Lully and Molière
Word Premiere ‘re-création’ - Utrecht Early Music Festival, 27 August 2004 |
| "The standing ovation given by the Batavian audience proved, if necessary, the universality of Molière’s theatre, as well as the success of a first-rate work. The ovation was justified for the sublime four-hour performance which was lit by three hundred candles…This Bourgeois meant both a return to the origins of baroque art and a radical modernity. Performed by a young and fervent troupe, as fascinated by contemporary music as by early music, this production of Bourgeois owes its existence as much to the talent of the new generation of erudite and skilled artists, as to the fifty-year-old baroque tradition…May Utrecht church belles sound far away the good news of a performance which merits as much success as the legendary Christie performance of Atys by Villégier, because it is its equal." |
| Opéra International, October 2004 |
| "Vincent Dumestre likes difficult challenges…On a magical stage lit by a thousand candles, the make-up, the costumes are animated by a mysterious spirit…Baroque dance has never seemed as expressive…Utrecht’s captivated audience definitely understood all this…The combined strengths of the stage manager/actor Benjamin Lazar and Vincent Dumestre have given a new vigour to baroque performance." |
| Diapason, October 2004 |
| "For the opening of Utrecht festival, a resurrected production of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme which will make its mark. This Bourgeois becomes again, as it historically was, a comedy-ballet…with the curtain barely raised, the magic sets in…4 hours goes by like in a dream." |
| Les Echos, August 2004 |
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