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No doubt a companion piece to 1999's All the Way: A Decade of Song, On Ne Change Pas is a two-disc compendium of the other, mildly overlooked phase of Celine Dion's career: her performances sung entirely in her native tongue of Québecois French. While she soared up charts all over the globe with her hits sung in English, she also amassed quite a back catalog of hits ranging from dance-pop-friendly numbers to her familiar ground of passionate, melodramatic ballads. For those unfamiliar with this portion of her career (or for those who don't speak French), getting past the roadblock of not being able to understand the subject material will lead to a greater, more holistic appreciation of the depth and prolific output of her career in such a short span. At two discs, it's also a bit much Dion for anyone to swallow in one sitting, but on the plus side there are also a few new tracks, including her duet with Il Divo, "I Believe in You."© Rob Theakston /TiVo

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No doubt a companion piece to 1999's All the Way: A Decade of Song, On Ne Change Pas is a two-disc compendium of the other, mildly overlooked phase of Celine Dion's career: her performances sung entirely in her native tongue of Québecois French. While she soared up charts all over the globe with her hits sung in English, she also amassed quite a back catalog of hits ranging from dance-pop-friendly numbers to her familiar ground of passionate, melodramatic ballads. For those unfamiliar with this portion of her career (or for those who don't speak French), getting past the roadblock of not being able to understand the subject material will lead to a greater, more holistic appreciation of the depth and prolific output of her career in such a short span. At two discs, it's also a bit much Dion for anyone to swallow in one sitting, but on the plus side there are also a few new tracks, including her duet with Il Divo, "I Believe in You."© Rob Theakston /TiVo

No doubt a companion piece to 1999's All the Way: A Decade of Song, On Ne Change Pas is a two-disc compendium of the other, mildly overlooked phase of Celine Dion's career: her performances sung entirely in her native tongue of Québecois French. While she soared up charts all over the globe with her hits sung in English, she also amassed quite a back catalog of hits ranging from dance-pop-friendly numbers to her familiar ground of passionate, melodramatic ballads. For those unfamiliar with this portion of her career (or for those who don't speak French), getting past the roadblock of not being able to understand the subject material will lead to a greater, more holistic appreciation of the depth and prolific output of her career in such a short span. At two discs, it's also a bit much Dion for anyone to swallow in one sitting, but on the plus side there are also a few new tracks, including her duet with Il Divo, "I Believe in You."© Rob Theakston /TiVo

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Everyone thinks that they know Alceste by Lully, and yet this 1674 masterpiece has almost never been recorded in its entirety. Apart from the Malgoire version from 1975 with Bruce Brewer and Felicity Palmer, which is starting to become outdated, the real treat is a second versoin by the same Malgoire twenty years later with Jean-Philippe Lafont and Colette Alliot-Lugaz... And so we can only take our hats off to the new discographical opus from Christophe Rousset's Talens Lyriques, a lively and elegant reading which allows us to rediscover everything that was so innovative about this brilliant, effervescent Florentine, who would become a typical Versaillais, a courtesan and a wheeler-dealer. King Louis XIV - 36 years old, still with all his own teeth and a victorious war leader - could only feel flattered by the piece signed by Quinault: Alcide, who covets the beautiful Alceste (who has been promised to Admetus), is none other than Hercules himself - Louis XIV seeing himself in Hercules saving the beautiful Madame de Montespan from the clutches of her husband. To be sure, in this opera, Admetus/Hercules magnanimously hands Alceste, whom he has saved from hell, to her husband, while the poor Mr Montespan would end his career and his life exiled in Gascony... Honour intact. The Sun King loved the work, to the point that he commanded that rehearsals be held at Versailles. According to Madame de Sévigné, "The King declared that if he found himself in Paris when it was performed, he would go to see it every night." That being said, if Alceste suited the tastes of the court, it didn't do so well in Paris, where Lully's enemies, jealous of the extravagant privileges that he had won (the exclusive right to "have sung any whole piece in France, wither in French verse or in other languages, without the written permission of said Sir Lully, on pain of a ten thousand livre fine, and confiscation of theatres, equipment, decorations, costumes..."), heaped plot upon plot, while the gallant Mercury sang his little couplet: Dieu !  Le bel opéra ! Rien de plus pitoyable ! Cerbère y vient japper d'un aboi lamentable !  Oh ! Quelle musique de chien ! Oh ! Quelle musique du diable ! [Lord!/Fine opera!/There's nothing so pitiable!/Cerberus is yapping, his howls lamentable!/What doggish music!/What devilish music!]. Posterity would decide otherwise, and Rousset proved it triumphantly. © SM/Qobuz

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Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine ("The Human Voice") is a one-woman opera, less than an hour long, about a woman on the phone with her boyfriend as they break up. Set to a text by Jean Cocteau, it puts the woman through strong mood swings. (Country music fans may wish to compare it to As Soon as I Hang Up the Phone, although there, the boyfriend is present to deliver the final blow.) Soprano Véronique Gens is best known for music from the 17th century up to Mozart, but it is easy to believe the claim in the publicity materials for this release that she had always wanted to record this work; its direct, conversational quality, interspersed with occasional freakouts, fits her manner beautifully. It might seem that those freakouts require a bit more intensity than Gens gives them here, but that is not really in the Cocteau spirit and certainly not in the Poulenc spirit. Gens receives sensitive support from the Orchestre National de Lille under Alexandre Bloch, who also ring down the curtain with a lithe performance of the joyous Sinfonietta. There are other strong performances of Poulenc's little opera, which ought to be much more frequently heard and would be ideal for university voice programs, but this one is instantly appealing and quite memorable, and it is no surprise that it made classical best-seller charts in early 2023. © James Manheim /TiVo

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