Composers: Salieri
Compositions: Tarare
Performers: Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset
Catalogue Number: Aparte AP208 (3CD)

Beaumarchais’s plays gave us some of the greatest operas of the repertoire – Mozart’s Figaro, Rossini’s Barbiere. So hopes are high for the author’s only libretto. But best set these aside, because Tarare is a profoundly odd Oriental fantasy of an opera – a comic muddle of gods and mortals, with little logic and still less emotional credibility. The title itself is an old French term meaning something like ‘taradiddle’. The whole thing is – deliberately – a lot of silliness.