Rousseau: Le Devin du village

The shepherd Colin, who has taken to courting a noble lady, grows weary of a life of luxury and returns to his simple country life with the shepherdess Colette. The universal talent Jean-Jacques Rousseau could not have come up with a better plot for the impressive and urgent proclamation of the motto, ‘Back to Nature’, that turned the eighteenth century around and upside down! The fact that he then also immediately set it as an opera was another stroke of genius. Actually, it is only an intermezzo composed shortly after Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and thus the first French response to this little epoch-making gem. Tragic subjects from antiquity would no longer monopolise the dramatic realm; the plain, simple, and everyday would finally find a welcome place on the stage. Endowed with charming, deliberately simple music, Rousseau’s little opera more than merits a new recording with historical instruments. An absolute listening delight!