Opéra Royal - Clérambault te deum - Story of the adulterous woman

Cultural

Nicolas Clérambault, famous for his organ works and cantatas, was a major composer at the end of the reign of Louis XIV and during the youth of Louis XV...

Nicolas Clérambault, famous for his organ pieces and cantatas, was a major composer at the end of the reign of Louis XIV and during the youth of Louis XV. Noticed by Louis XIV, who appointed him Superintendent of Music for Madame de Maintenon from 1710, and then for the Royal House of Saint Cyr from 1714, he composed a wide variety of works, culminating in his 1743 cantata Les Francs-Maçons, whose values he was the first to defend in the French music world.

His large-scale Te Deum magnifies the royal glory, in the tradition of Lully and Lalande. It is associated here with the famous Missa Assumpta est Maria by his elder Marc-Antoine Charpentier, as well as with L'Histoire de la Femme adulère, Clérambault's only known oratorio. The work is based on the canons of the seventeenth-century Roman oratorio, modelled in particular by Carissimi. Clérambault successfully fused French and Italian tastes, blending the declamatory French style with ultramontane structural elements.

Reinoud van Mechelen has fallen in love with this rare composer. The Belgian countertenor and conductor continues his Baroque journey through these large-scale works, signing the first collaboration of his ensemble a nocte temporis with the prestigious Namur Chamber Choir, which is the subject of a recording for the Château de Versailles Spectacles label.