Antonio Salieri composed Les Danaïdes under the tutelage of his teacher Gluck. The libreto was written for Gluck, but he was already tired and disenchanted with the Paris Opera, so he let his pupil compose it.
The funny thing is that Gluck presented the opera as his own to prevent booing for Salieri just because he was Italian. The opera was a success and after the sixth performance Gluck revealed the truth. By then it was too late for the antipiccinnists to sabotage it [Piccinni was a contemporary of Gluck who was also active in the 1780´s in Paris, the French who love a good match soon took sides between Gluck and Piccinni, though the composers who respected each other couldn´t care less].
So, Les Danaïdes composed in late Gluck style was admired and performed for several decades in Paris, as late as 1828 it was still being performed and even the obnoxious Hector Berlioz liked it.
Surprisingly this is the fourth recording of Les Danaïdes, in the late 80´s Giangluigi Gelmetti made the first recording on modern instruments for EMI, then a few years ago Michael Hofstetter made a very good recording in the Ludwigsburg Festival for the OEHMS label, and Dynamic recently released yet another one once more with Gelmetti conducting and a much past her prime Montserrat Caballé as the heroine.
That Rousset´s was going to be the best of all was an easy guess. Les Talens Lyriques play superbly, the singers are all excellent, and the audio quality state of the art.
Next to the Catone in Utica this is already one of the best opera recordings of the year.
