Words are Gens’s secret weapon. She brings out their meanings and sonic qualities like no other singer: spiked rhythms register her vitriol, towering anger splits open her vowels on top notes and despair oozes from her whispered sibilants…For opulence and originality, this recording sets a new benchmark in Gens’s discography.

Gens is in thrilling voice. She has the knack – harder, surely, in miscellaneous pieces than in a complete opera – of instantly getting to the heart of a character…Warmly recommended.

The voice remains in remarkable condition, as strongly radiant, firm and secure as ever with powerful chest notes...And of course the characteristics that have made her so prized in this repertoire, the perfect shaping of line and outstanding diction, remain, still more finely honed.

Fifteen years on from her first compelling gallery of Tragediennes, Gens remains unparalleled in this repertoire - the voice is as fresh and distinctive as ever, exuding a combination of regal authority and vulnerability which brings Médée, Circée, Armide and company vividly to life. Chorus and orchestra, too, are on scintillating dramatic form, particularly in the tempest from Collasse’s Thétis et Pélée and the inferno from Lully’s Proserpine.

Here she returns to her French baroque roots, her voice still youthfully fresh...with a tragedienne’s clarity of diction and histrionic eloquence…The final sequence, climaxing in Charpentier’s Medée, the masterpiece of the period, shows Gens at the height of her interpretative powers.