Requiems pour Louis XVI & Marie-Antoinette

Description

In 1817, two years after the restoration of the Monarchy by Louis XVIII, the Court attended the performance of Cherubini's Requiem in memory of Louis XVI, while the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Marie-Antoinette's death (1823) was seized to perform Charles-Henri Plantade's Mass for the Dead in her memory. Berlioz has just arrived in Paris, and it is at the same time that Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena. In 2015, the Château de Versailles presented these two works during the same concert. While Cherubini's Requiem, composed for mixed choir and orchestra but without soloists, is well known, Charles-Henri Plantade's Requiem, which has the same structure, is a complete discovery. It offers a striking bridge between the models of the Ancien Régime and early Romanticism and displays a richness and inventiveness reminiscent of Méhul, Cherubini, and even Rossini. Unearthed by the Palazetto Bru Zane, this work is recorded here for the first time. A great specialist in French music and large sacred forms, Hervé Niquet fully showcases these two works, recorded in the Royal Chapel, which enrich the Alpha / Château de Versailles collection.