Les Génies ou les Caractères de l’Amour is an opera/ballet of 1736 by one Mademoiselle Duval who was 22 at the time.  Almost nothing is known about Duval except that she was at one time a chorus member at the Royal Opera in Paris.  It seems reasonable to deduce that she was from a family of professional musicians and that’s how she got her training.  FWIW Les Génies was only the second opera by a woman to be produced by the Royal Opera.  It’s recently been recorded for CD under the auspices of Château de Versailles Spectacles.

The work itself is quite conventional and has some similarities with Rameau’s work of the previous year Les Indes galantes.  There’s a prologue then four acts; each is devoted to a different kind of elemental love.  There’s Water – Les Nymphes, which deals with “Indiscreet Love”; Earth – Les Gnomes or “Ambitious Love”; Fire – Les Salamandres or “Violent Love” and Air – Les Sylphs which deals with “Light Love”.  There’s a largish cast who take multiple roles depending on the needs of each act.  The recits, airs and choruses are liberally sprinkled with dance movements in all the expected forms.  It doesn’t have the exuberance of Rameau though.

In many ways it’s a typical opera/ballet of its time and place with the strengths and weaknesses that implies.  It’s well crafted.  The singers get to display their stuff (as no doubt do the dancers but this is a CD!).  But there’s not much in the way of plot or drama.  After all allegorical characters being allegorical can only go so far!  After a while a successiion of pretty, civilized, somewhat formulaic, 17th century French music gets rather predictable and a bit boring.

One can’t knock the performance though.  It uses an impressive line up of period specialists starting with conductor Camille Delaforge and the excellent Ensemble Il Caravaggio.  The singers; Marie Perbost, Florie Valiquette, Anna Reinhold, Etienne de Bénazé, Paco Garcia, Guilhem Worms, Matthieu Walendzik and Cécile Achille are all very stylish and have very good French diction.  The chorus is the home team; Le Choeur de l’Opéra Royal.  I just wish I could get more excited about either the libretto or the music!

The recording was made in 2023 in the Salle des Croisades du Château de Versailles and it’s clear and nicely balanced but a bit two dimensional.  I was listening to 96kHz/24 bit digital files and to be honest I expected more detail and ambience than I was hearing.  It’s available as a physical 2 CD set or digitally in MP3 or CD quality and hi-res FLAC.  The documentation is very good with helpful explanatory material as well as full text and translation.

An interesting oddity but probably mainly interesting to specialists in this period.

Catalogue information: Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS121