This recording of airs from Rameau’s heroic ballets and lyric tragedies features the renowned haute-contre Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, one of the main exponents of the French Baroque repertoire for the last decade and who, most recently, has been closely associated with Rameau’s opera Platée. In these excerpts, Rameau’s colourful palette of musical characterization traverses a wide range of emotion, from the profoundly moving Lieux funestes (Dardanus) to the witty and imaginative air Charmant Bacchus (Platée) when, for example, Rameau cleverly employs ‘drunken’ part writing under Thespis’ words “Dussé-je être mal écouté” (“Even at the risk of being misunderstood”).