This re-release of orchestral suites from two stage works by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) marks the first occasion on which Jeanne Lamon, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto’s award-winning period instrument orchestra, recorded music of the French baroque.

The two suites featured on this CD are drawn from Rameau’s epic five-act “tragédie en musique” Dardanus, and from the less familiar “opéra-ballet” Le Temple de la Gloire.

Rameau was a mature composer of fifty before he completed his first opera - Hippolyte et Aricie (1733). Over the next six years, the dispute between the conservative Lullistes (i.e. Jean-Baptiste Lully) and the Ramistes continued to rage, climaxing with the semi-mythological tragedy Dardanus in 1739. The furor eventually abated, however, and Dardanus was acclaimed as one of Rameau’s finest achievements.

Le temple de la gloire - a commission celebrating France’s victory over British and Imperial forces at the Battle of Fontenoy - was completed in 1745.