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Ravel: L'Heure espagnole - Bolero

François-Xavier Roth

Opera - Released June 16, 2023 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica
The main attraction of the orchestra Les Siècles and its conductor François-Xavier Roth is its use of period instruments from around 1900, the time period in which the group specializes. One could hardly ask for a better demonstration record (as audiophiles used to call them) than this take on Maurice Ravel's L'Heure espagnole, an edgy, rather tawdry but undeniably funny little opera about the extramarital escapades of a clockmaker's wife, complete with excellent satirical characterizations of her two lovers. The opera receives a pitch-perfect performance here from a quintet of younger singers, who deliver the kind of dry, close-to-spoken singing Ravel wanted. Even better, though, is the orchestral sound, where the opera's large contingent of winds, brass, and percussion displays the sound of Les Siècles at its most vivid. The score calls for trios of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, and these all have a tangier sound than modern instruments provide. The program ends with Boléro, and this, too, stands out from among the hundreds or thousands of other recordings on the market. Ravel had very fixed ideas about how he wanted the work to sound, and he wrangled with Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the premiere in New York, about it: it should be played absolutely straight, with no variation in tempo and little expression. Notwithstanding the connotations that became attached to the work later on, he viewed it as an abstract work, and that is exactly what it becomes in Roth's bracing reading. Listeners who have been wanting to sample Roth's work with this orchestra are enthusiastically encouraged to try this release, which made classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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David & Jonathas

Gaétan Jarry

Classical - Released June 9, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Offenbach: La Princesse de Trébizonde

Paul Daniel

Opera - Released September 22, 2023 | Opera Rara

Hi-Res Distinctions Gramophone: Recording of the Month
The Opera Rara label and company, true to their name, resurrect forgotten operas. There is an abundance of those in the output of Jacques Offenbach, who wrote some 100 operettas and opéras bouffes, few of which are remembered today. Opera Rara made a good pick with La Princesse de Trébizonde (1869), and this release made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023. Offenbach is as full of good, Arthur Sullivan-like tunes as ever, and he even discarded a number of them from the operetta's original production in Baden-Baden in the process of preparing a new version for Paris. Those discarded pieces are included here, and there could hardly be a better testimony to Offenbach's melodic fecundity. Better still is the action, taking place in a carnival sideshow and suggesting all kinds of ideas for a production set in modern times. It is gloriously preposterous even by operetta standards. A girl, Zanetta, accidentally breaks the nose off a wax figure of the Princess of Trébizonde and agrees to stand in for the figure herself. A prince (a pants role) -- who has dropped a lottery ticket into the till in lieu of paying admission -- falls in love with the "Princess." Meanwhile, the lottery ticket, with a castle as the prize, comes up a winner and overturns the relationships between rich and poor. The comic scenes thus spawned are handled with the needed high spirits by the cast and the several choruses (executed by Opera Rara's remarkable house chorus), and conductor Paul Daniel is ideal in this genre, consistently pushing the tempo just slightly in order to bring the forward momentum. This recording is based on a 2022 London production but is a "cast recording," not a live one, and it is quite clear sonically. La Princesse de Trébizonde has been recorded only twice before, once in Russian (!) and once for French radio in 1966; this sprightly performance is much needed.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Psyché

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Intégrale des albums originaux

Georges Brassens

French Music - Released January 1, 2010 | Universal Music Division Mercury Records

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Poulenc: La voix humaine

Véronique Gens

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Alpha Classics

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica
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

L'album de sa vie

Daniel Balavoine

French Music - Released January 8, 2021 | Universal Music Division Barclay

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Maisons Alfort

Florent Marchet

French Music - Released October 13, 2023 | Nodiva

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Varsovie, L'Alhambra, Paris

Saez

French Music - Released April 21, 2008 | Wagram Music - Cinq 7

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Charpentier: David et Jonathas, H. 490

Les Pages du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles

Opera - Released March 1, 2024 | Aparté

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Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David et Jonathas, setting the action-packed biblical story of Saul, has not often been recorded. William Christie and Les Arts Florissants fired the first shot in the late '90s, and there have been a few other attempts, but the work crosses categories -- not really an oratorio, with a limited role for the chorus, but not an opera in the conventional sense -- and this may have hurt it at the box office. The Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles specializes in music of this period, and Charpentier is certainly right up this outfit's alley. The recording was made at Versailles, but its strength is actually that it reproduces the circumstances of its origin, which occurred elsewhere, at a Jesuit school in Paris. The music was intended to alternate with scenes from a play; here, conductor Olivier Schneebeli opts for declaimed readings from poetry by the 17th century writer Antoine Godeau. The work was written for young singers, not only in the children's choir but also a child in the lead role of Jonathas, and Natacha Boucher has a great deal of flair here, certainly sounding like a future star. All the singers are either children or male adults. The music is continuous, and Charpentier's writing sometimes falls into melody or recitative but is most often somewhere in between, shifting naturally with the text. Some of it is quite vocally spectacular, however; sample "Quelle importune voix vient importune mon repos," Act I, scene 4, with its bass line descending to Russian-liturgical depths. Although the opera has five acts and a prologue, it goes by quickly; no doubt with the original use in mind, Charpentier's concept is compact. What is most attractive about the work is how opposite it is to the splendor and formality of Lully; the role of the chorus is limited, and the focus is squarely on the characters. Baroque opera lovers will find something new and intriguing here.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Unicum: New Songs from the Leuven chansonnier

Ensemble Leones

Chamber Music - Released February 24, 2023 | Naxos

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Noël sous l'Empire

Quentin Guérillot

Classical - Released December 8, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Le chanteur

Daniel Balavoine

French Music - Released April 1, 1978 | Universal Music Division Barclay

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Tout va très bien !

Le Grand Orchestre Du Splendid

Pop - Released November 25, 2016 | Jazz Village

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Camille Saint-Saëns: Phryné

Hervé Niquet

Opera - Released February 11, 2022 | Bru Zane

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Everyone knows Camille Saint-Saëns has a great sense of humour thanks to his Carnaval des Animaux in which no one escapes ridicule, not even him. Now the Palazzetto Bru Zane Foundation and Hervé Niquet have unearthed Phryné, a forgotten comic opera from 1893 enriched with recitatives composed by André Messager three years later.Received with immense and lasting success in its time, this brilliant work eventually fell into the abyss, never to be seen again. Fortunately, fans of Saint-Saëns made great efforts to rediscover his works on the centenary of his death in 2021. Phryné captures the "Grecomania" that was prevalent in all the arts in France at this time, especially in Offenbach’s music and even in architecture (just think of the beautiful Parisian district of New Athens in the 9th arrondissement). Ironically, and perhaps a little cheekily, Saint-Saens confessed that he was “working on this little piece with infinite pleasure” and was infatuated with this courtesan musician who had served as a model for the sculptor Praxitele.Always keen to discover a forgotten repertoire, Hervé Niquet brought together a few singers, Florie Valiquette, Cyrille Dubois, Anaïs Constans and Thomas Dolié, to breathe some life back into Phryné with his Concert Spirituel, with the aim of producing a concert version to be performed in the Opéra de Rouen Normandie in 2021. Though Lucien Augé’s libretto may seem tasteless today with its hefty dose of misogyny, Saint-Saens’ music is simply delicious, with a succession of arias and ensembles. This modest and charming opera-comedy, which Charles Gounod so enjoyed, offers a less serious and less academic take of a composer that well and truly deserves to be rediscovered. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Maurice Yvain: Yes!

Les Frivolités Parisiennes

Classical - Released March 22, 2024 | Alpha Classics

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Le Grand Orchestre Du Splendid Chante Boris Vian

Le Grand Orchestre Du Splendid

French Music - Released January 1, 2002 | Sterne

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Un autre rendez-vous

HK

Pop/Rock - Released November 25, 2022 | BLUE LINE

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Rire une dernière fois avant la fin du monde...

Didier Super

Pop - Released April 17, 2020 | Métro Belleville

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Salieri : Tarare

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released June 7, 2019 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - Gramophone Editor's Choice - Choc de Classica
While Mozart was largely overlooked in the French capital, Antonio Salieri took on the reigns of the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera), a fruitful collaboration that was completely broken up by the French Revolution. After the success of his work Les Danaïdes, composed for Paris in 1784, Salieri worked tirelessly with Beaumarchais, spurred on by the success and scandal of his Figaro, on a new project which would become Tarare. Beaumarchais moved himself shamelessly toward stardom, skillfully self-promoting and attending rehearsals so as to assure that the orchestra played pianissimo to emphasize the primacy of his verse during performances. Beaumarchais found that the music was too overwhelming to “embellish the lyrics”.Created one year after Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (which was relatively well-received in Vienna before triumphing in Prague), Tarare was an immense success in Paris maintaining the status of the composer’s repertoire despite the political turmoil of the time before disappearing from view around 1826, thereon ceasing to be played. Beaumarchais’ words were immediately adapted into Italian by Lorenzo Da Ponte to be performed and met with equal success in Vienna. Tarare is half lyrical tragedy, half comic opera with a hint of orientalism.After resuscitating Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Christophe Rousset finished off his series of recordings dedicated to Salieri’s French operas for the Parisian public. Tarare is very much of its time, that of the Lumières, and used the power of art to challenge despotism in all its forms. Thanks to Christophe Rousset’s excellent delivery and lively direction, this recording enables one to judge the merits of the composition and the chasm that separates an honest and talented musician from a solitary and impassioned one like Mozart. © François Hudry/Qobuz