If you were lucky enough to catch David Bintley’s brilliant BBC4 homage to Louis XIV’s Ballet Royal de la Nuit you will be familiar with some of this. Sébastien Daucé spent three years reconstructing the music from the huge piece, performed in 1653, with 15-year-old Louis dancing the sun king to wild acclaim. Little record was kept of those who contributed music for the ballet, but Jean de Cambefort was definitely among them and Daucé has intelligently reworked incomplete sketches made 40 years after the work’s performance, interpolating some passages from Francesco Cavalli and others, all sung and played with tremendous verve by the suave singers and players of the Ensemble Correspondances.
