At first glance, one might not recognize the name of the group
Lunaisiens, and for English speakers there is precious little about the group in Alpha Productions' booklet for Jean-Baptiste Stuck: Tirannique empire…; in short,
Lunaisiens began in 2004, shortly before its debut at the Jean de La Fontaine Festival at Château-Thierry in the works presented here. Some members of this group are also in
Le Poème Harmonique. The name of the composer, Jean-Baptiste Stuck, is not exactly a familiar one. Despite his Franco-German-sounding name, Stuck was Austrian-Italian and primarily studied in Italy and made his fortune composing for the Parisian theater in the 1710s. In his Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau referred to him as Batastin, the diminutive of Baptiste. Stuck was employed by multiple courts within the French nobility, including the court of Philippe II, the Duke of Orleans, who served as Regent in France from 1715. Ultimately, Stuck moved into the service of the Royal Court, though not long after the Regent's death in 1723 he seems to have abandoned composition in favor of working as a virtuoso cello player. The liner notes repeat La Borde's statement that he was the first to play the cello at the Paris Opéra, around 1730; it's a claim Grove's disputes, although it concurs that Stuck's popularity as cellist probably offered an assist to the decline of the bass viol in Paris.
Perhaps appropriately, bass violist Isabelle Saint-Yves performs the all-important cello parts on this disc, which feature three of Stuck's French cantatas bridged by a sonata composed by Michele Mascitti, an associate of Stuck's, and another by François Duval, whose sonata is thematically linked to Stuck's cantata Héraclite et Démocrite. Stuck's operas enjoyed a level of relative success ranging from only moderate to failure; and it was really his secular cantatas, often performed at the opera, that made his reputation as a composer. On texts invariably concerned with the romantic foibles and follies of the various Greco-Roman gods; in the bass cantata Mars Jaloux (The Jealousy of Mars), Mars is so incensed at Venus' liaison with Adonis that he asks Bellona to "lay waste the regions that harbor my rival." Both this and L'Impatience are decent cantatas and well sung by tenor
Jean-François Novelli and bass
Arnaud Marzorati, but seem of their time and have few characteristics that stand out. Héraclite et Démocrite is a definite exception; to begin with, it is an unusual dialogue between allegorical characters representing optimism and pessimism and the mood of Stuck's music matches whomever is singing at that given point; when both are exchanging short lines the result in the accompaniment is rather interesting and odd. Stuck's writing is deep and very lyrical in the passages designed to follow pessimism, whereas he picks up the tempo and scores optimism in a most sprightly and agreeable manner. While Héraclite et Démocrite occupies 25 interesting minutes out of a less interesting 66, this work has been recorded elsewhere, most significantly by
Marc Minkowski and
Les Musiciens des Louvre, within the context of French cantatas by other, equally talented composers of this era. So while Alpha Productions' Jean-Baptiste Stuck: Tirannique empire… features a promising group in literature that is at least intriguing, it is not essential and mainly succeeds at just being pleasant.