Anyone who has played solitaire to any degree is aware that royal marriages were of critical importance in Renaissance society. That of the young Louis XIV to his cousin Maria Theresa of Austria on June 9, 1660, was an unusually big deal, the wedding of the century as the graphics here have it. Not only did Louis XIV already like to do things in the grand style, arriving at the wedding after a tour of his realm at the end of a gigantic equine retinue, but the ceremony was freighted with even more political significance than usual, marking as it did the end of decades of hostility between France and Spain (Maria Theresa was the Infanta of Spain). So the wedding was a major event, combining splendor with a variety of sounds. Unfortunately, there is no actual record of the music that was performed there, as there is for some of the other royal weddings of the era. However, the conception of
Le Poeme Harmonique
and its director,
Vincent Dumestre
, is persuasive. In general, he conveys the large scope the ceremony must have had, with a substantial orchestra and a 20-voice choir (it could even have been larger), and he is aided by a spacious acoustic from the Chapelle Royale at Versailles, captured beautifully by the engineering team. The repertory also makes sense. The opening processional material includes music by
Jean-Baptiste Lully
for the French, the Spaniards, and intriguingly the Basques, whose piece is distinctly folkish. For the marriage ceremony itself, there are two large religious pieces, one by
Lully
and a
Magnificat
by
Francesco Cavalli
, who would have been the spare-no-expense opera composer at the time and would have cemented a few political allegiances himself. Between those are organ pieces and a slow
Sinfonia
by, again intriguingly, the Jewish Venetian composer
Salamone Rossi
. The final section consists of "Rejouissances & Ballets des Nations," essentially a dance party that ends with a wild piece by
Juan Hidalgo
, "Dos zagalas venian," that illustrated the new rhythmic breezes blowing up from the south. The entire thing is detailed enough to interest the specialists who will immerse themselves in the sumptuous booklet but lively enough for any listener to hear and to use in imagining what it was like to be at the wedding that day. An exciting recording from Versailles' ambitious
in-house label
. ~ James Manheim