Outstanding among the stylish cast are Judith Van Wanroij as the eponymous heroine, her delivery pliant and lucid, her satin tones persuasively seductive…Rousset draws alert and vital playing from his crack instrumental ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, while his direction of the unfolding drama is responsive but never overblown.

Few if any conductors match Christophe Rousset’s understanding of Lullian style and rhetoric...His pacing and inflecting of the music seems unerring...[and he] draws compelling performances from his singers, all of whom sound at ease in the tricky-to-master art of natural French declamation...it is hard to imagine this music, often delightful, sometimes witty, intermittently touching, coming alive more vividly than it does here.

This recording...has left me pondering anew Christophe Rousset's totally idiomatic command of Lully's style. [Ambroisine Bré] Her beautifully produced mezzo, even across its range, is a joy, enhanced by flawlessly articulated ornaments. The addition of the outstanding playing of Les Talens Lyriques and singing of the Namur chorus completes encomiums for what is perhaps the most outstanding operatic experience I have heard in a long time.

Lully’s unjust reputation in Britain as a third-rate Frenchified Purcell has taken a knocking in recent years, especially thanks to Rousset’s fine recordings. This, his seventh complete Lully opera on disc, is one of the best.

among the great rediscoveries of our time.

...the choruses prove one of Alceste’s main attractions in their invention and contrast, and are superbly sung here by the Chœur de Chambre de Namur. The recording is excellent and flows at a natural pace, with singers taking multiple roles. Judith Van Wanroij is a restrained Alceste, Edwin Crossley-Mercer a noble-toned Alcide, and Ambroisine Bré shines in her three assumptions.