Orpheus. (Complete opera)

"This is an important and hugely enjoyable release...Jacobs and his musicians deserve congratulations, and so do Harmonia Mundi for their first-rate recording...this has proved an auspicious beginning to 1998. Strongly recommended...No opera lover should miss it."
(Gramophone)

"Orpheus is shown to be an opera of stature and beauty, ingratiating melody, wide-ranging in emotion...Roman Trekel makes a passionate, moving Orpheus and soprano Ruth Ziesak a sweet Euridice...Telemann's score is so strong, so full of music, that it makes one want to hear more of this composer's operas. If finally he seems more soft-grained than either Bach or Handel, the reigning geniuses of the time, he is their Richard Strauss - and that is no mean achievement." (Opera News)

"In the title role Roman Trekel's singing ideally suits the persuasive urbanity of the music. Especially pleasing is a duet with Werner Gura as his friend Eurimedes. But, at every turn, this is extremely agreeable and charming music to hear. Jacobs has done it again - disinterred a marvel which he conducts with remarkable theatrical flair."
Disc of the Month FIVE STARS (Classic CD)

An Operatic Masterpiece by… Telemann.
More than a century after Monteverdi and long before Gluck, it was the tragédie lyrique "Orphée" by Louis Lully and Michel du Boulay that provided Telemann with a new reading of the Orpheus myth. Sung for the most part in German, this brilliant synthesis of the principal European styles does not shrink from borrowing several verses in Italian and in French from Handel and Lully… and reveals a quite astounding mastery of the various operatic styles (seria, buffa and mixed). Telemann produced a good number of operas for the Hamburg Opera, but none of them attained to these summits. In this respects "Orpheus" is an extraordinary rediscovery.