To open its 45th season, Arion Baroque Orchestra has adopted this formula of the Concerts de la Reine. Under the aegis of Marie Leszcynska, wife of Louis XV between 1725 and 1762, the Concerts de la Reine offered the court excerpts from vocal works or even movements from symphonies, more suited to the setting of the royal apartments and private salons. In the splendor of the ballrooms of the royal palaces, works were thus played for the pleasure of royalty. It is with this idea of arranging disparate pieces that Mathieu Lussier built the repertoire of this concert, from instrumental music to vocal music.
With this underlying theme of femininity in mind, Arion opened its season with a work by a female composer – a first for the ensemble in 45 years. Taken from a small pastoral opera, properly named Le Concert, Mademoiselle Laurant’s arias, symphonies, and dances possessed a lightness and lyricism very much of the period, oscillating between animated, interior, and royal character. In comparison, the excerpts from the Prologue to the opera-ballet Les Génies or Les Caractères de l’Amour by a certain Madame Duval presented a wide variety of dynamics, notably the Air des Génies, which was particularly original in its multi-thematic construction.
Besides these two composers, if there was a queen at this edition, it was the Canadian soprano Emma Fekete. Winner of several prizes and grants, including that of winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition in 2024, the 17th and 18th century repertoire was not yet on the slate of the young lyric artist who could be heard above all in Carmen (Frasquita), Le nozze di Figaro (Barbarina) and L’enfant et les sortilèges (Bergère, Pastourelle).
The work she did to sculpt her voice in the vocal aesthetics of the Baroque era was simply excellent. The crystalline high notes are precise, the vocal line blends into the orchestral mass with great control of timbre, and the articulation and pronunciation are of great clarity.
Particularly captivating was the performance of the aria “Vents furieux, tristes tempêtes” from the comedy-ballet La Princesse de Navarre by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The constant, breathless roll of the orchestra, which illustrated the storm’s tempestuous nature, was magnified by Emma Fekete’s committed and embodied performance. In each of the pieces she performed, the soprano demonstrated mastery of form as well as a strong stage presence, giving each excerpt the appropriate depth, whether in the imaginative “Rossignols amoureux” from Hippolyte et Aricie or the rarely performed arias from Scylla et Glaucus by Jean-Marie Leclair. Emma Fekete captivated the audience with each of her performances with her luminous timbre and the intelligence of her interpretations.
In front of a respectable audience, Mathieu Lussier’s troops kicked off a season which, in keeping with the intentions of its artistic director, aims to showcase the repertoire of little-performed composers as well as the richness and variety that 18th-century music has to offer.
Photo Credits : Tam Photography
