The exciting and vigorous talents of Sébastien d’Hérin and Les Nouveaux Caractères announce their debut on Glossa with a major – and appropriately ‘unexpected’ – release of a glaring Rameau operatic omission on record: 'Les Surprises de l’Amour' (Cupid’s Surprises). This opéra-ballet, consisting here of three separate entrées, first performed in 1748 and submitted to later revisions, comes from the period of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s rich maturity when he had finally become a court composer.

Three tales of love struggling variously against aggression (L’Enlèvement d’Adonis), indifference (La Lyre enchantée) and drink (Anacréon) are brought to life in this captivating new production mixing vocal airs, dialogues and duets with the full panoply of Rameau’s orchestral genius – including battle and sleep scenes, dances and thunder effects.

Through recently formed, the Lyon-based Les Nouveaux Caractères consists of a stable group of artists which, as well as incorporating the cultured harpsichord-playing and direction of Sébastien d’Hérin, presents here vocal soloists of the calibre of Karine Deshayes, Caroline Mutel, Anders Dahlin, Virginie Pochon and Jean-Sébastien Bou, who are called upon to portray an array of mythological figures such as Cupid himself, his mother Venus, the huntress Diana, the Siren Parthenope, the Muse Urania as well as the bibulous lover Anacreon, all in an inventive musical score which originally featured no less than Madame de Pompadour in its cast.