Taking its title from an amorous chorus in Rameau’s Les Boréades (1763), this programme traverses French operatic genres spanning from 1728 to 1771. Cyrille Dubois’s flexible haute-contre shines in assorted arias (many of them obscure), and the Hungarian forces conducted stylishly by György Vashegyi also contribute orchestral pieces and choruses such as nymphs from Mondonville’s Les fêtes de Paphos (1758) and a storm from Iso’s Phaétuse (1759) replete with sound effects.

Some celebrated Rameau works are at the heart of proceedings: a flute-led sarabande from Castor et Pollux, the fizzing elements of fire, earth, water and stone in the overture to Zaïs (every component across the ingenious instrumentation played magnificently), the comedic praise of Bacchus from Platée and the gorgeous ‘Descente de Polymnie’ from Les Boréades. Even ardent Ramistes might not be as closely acquainted with extracts from Les fêtes de Polymnie, La guirlande and Daphnis et Églé. A few other featured composers are reasonably familiar (Mondonville, Dauvergne, Royer), but François Rebel and his collaborator François Francoeur, the latter’s nephew Louis-Joseph Francoeur, Jean-Baptiste Cardonne, François Lupien Grenet, Pierre Montan Berton, Bernard de Bury and Pierre Iso will certainly be new names to almost everyone.

An extraordinarily unifying ebb and flow is achieved by seamless connectivity between intelligently plotted dramatic moods and musical colours – an album of nearly 80 minutes seems like a large-scale divertissement. Emotional torment in ‘Impétueux torrent, dont l’onde menaçante’ from Rebel and Francoeur’s Tarsis et Zélie (1728) segues into the delicacy of flutes and pizzicato for Bacchus’s sentimental ‘Mille tendres oiseaux sous cet ombrage frais’ from Dauvergne’s Les amours de Tempé (1752). Likewise, poignant melancholy in Céphale’s ‘Dieux cruels, dieux impitoyables’ in Louis-Joseph Francoeur’s L’Aurore et Céphale (1766) leads directly into the miserably lovelorn ‘Hylas’, a chorus of woodland nymphs and a separate male chorus in a scene from Grenet’s Le triomphe de l’Harmonie (1737); this includes a gorgeous sommeil during which Dubois’s dulcet finesse is matched by contrapuntal strings and flutes underpinned by the harpsichord’s lute stop. At the other end of the scale, Dubois’s articulate coloratura and astonishing sweetness in the upper stratosphere combine with vivacious Italianate strings to convey Daphnis’s rapturous delight at being in love from Dauvergne’s Les amours de Tempé (1752). Considering that so many of these operas and their composers are obscure even to specialists (11 excerpts have never been recorded before), Aparté’s booklet ought to have allowed Benoît Dratwicki much more space to share at least some historical details and musical insights.