Charpentier X 2

Up until a month ago, I had never heard a Charpentier opera.  Now I have heard two.  The first, in Victoria, BC, was a Boston Early Music Festival production of Charpentier's
Orpheus opera.   The singing and instrumental performance were truly superb; every rhythmic nuance came through, and the blending of the voices in Charpentier's frequent ensembles was superb.  The opera itself is more of a pastoral than a real drama, and a little disappointing.   The second opera we heard, "Acteon", though also a kind of pastorale, was more compelling. It was performed by Julliard students, conducted by the renowned William Christie. Again, the rhythmic pacing and instrumental performance were outstanding, but the voices were problematic.  Several of the singers seemed to have very little sense of baroque style and seemed unacquainted with the notion of dynamics.  It was fortissimo and vibrato all the way.   Surprising, given Christie's reputation as a developer of voices.  
I once wrote a ballet score based on the music of Rameau, and fell in love with his unique phrasing and rhythmic style, which is characteristic of the French baroque.  Charpentier, though earlier, has a lot of the same stylistic proclivities.   I much prefer the French style to the more rhythmically square rhythms of other Baroque composers, such as Telemann, for example.