On his third album as Christine and the Queens—but also using the new moniker Redcar—the artist now known simply as Chris isn't pushing boundaries so much as flying over them. "My journey with gender has always been tumultuous. It's raging right now, as I'm just exploring what is beyond this," he said in a May 2022 interview, around the time he announced his adoption of masculine pronouns. "A way to express it could be switching between they and she. I kind of want to tear down that system that made us label genders in such a strict way … I think the answer is to be flickery, fluid, escaping." That's also a pretty good description of his music, which is equally, and charmingly, hard to pin down. Opener "Ma bien aimée bye bye" finds Chris, as Redcar, adopting a chanteur's pose against the late-night cabaret sounds of slinky guitars and shimmering high-hat. Sung in a seamless mélange of French and English, it's a seductive goodbye but still, it's "my life till I die." (It completely fits Chris's estimation of the Redcar personality, which he has also called a "poetic and philosophical construction"—a very Bowie thing to say—as "suave and sophisticated.") While the last Christine and the Queens album leaned heavily into hard-edged '90s funk, here there are more references to the crisp-heavy bottom beats of Shannon-style '80s dance pop, especially on "la chanson du chevalier"—remarkable for its ethereally circling round-robin vocals, ranging from high and sweet ("the man I love") to a richer lead and sharp back-up—and Grace Jones-esque industrial rhythms. "Tu sais ce qu'il me faut" adopts Jones' unique binary of wild and controlled, while "Les âmes amantes" sounds like it's from another planet: liquid and layered. There's also dancefloor euphoria ("Looking for love"), powerful synth-heavy moments ("Les étoiles," aka the stars), airy sweetness ("rien dire") and an Annie Lennox cool breeze ("la clairefontaine"). A groovy eight-and-a-half-minute epic, "Combien de temps" samples electropop pioneer Gina X. "Je te vois enfin" sets up an intriguing mystery: "Oh-oh, my father I believe they have sinned," the lyrics translate to English. "It's impossible in your books not to sin." But Chris—Redcar—is perhaps most revealing on "Mémoire des ailes." The song is so clean and hymn-like, it sounds sacred, with vocals that completely envelop even as the music edgily stutters and shudders. "I'll teach you a game, I'll teach ya," he sings, at once a promise and a tease. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

In 1745, the King of France granted Jean-Philippe Rameau the title of ‘Composer to the Court’, coupled with a healthy pension. This new period produced pieces of a much lighter character, with Rameau working alongside the librettist Louis de Cahusac, and the resulting collaborations are now counted amongst the Burgundian musician’s greatest masterpieces. Zaïs was presented on the stage of the Royal Academy of Music in 1748. This heroic ballet offers French music some of its most beautiful movements, both vocally and instrumentally. The entire work is a meditation on its famous opening chaos, and succeeds, surprisingly, through its theatrical stamp and in the audacity of the writing. The plot is, perhaps, tenuous – a lover (Zaïs) is in the throes of affection for his beloved (Zélidie), determining to cherish her – which serves as the pretext for endless entertainment, dancing, and the work’s magical character. Today, it remains surprising that a work as sumptuous as Rameau’s Zaïs is neglected in favour of the Indes Galantes or Hippolyte et Aricie. It is paradoxical, then, that in 1970 Gustav would combine the small amount of French music he truly appreciated with a reassessment of the beauties of this work. Gustav created a fascinating recording with La Petite Bande Sigiswald Kuijken (STIL), which has now become a true rarity, despite its questionable vocalists. Happily for us, Christophe Rousset, who cherishes Rameaus’s older work, has dedicated himself to it, and offers us this gorgeously captured rendition, with French singers working under the direction of his sharp and witty leadership. The opening of the Les Talens Lyriques recital is far more vivid than anything that has been achieved in over twenty years for L’Oiseau-Lyre, in which the Ouverture immediately sets the tone. Rousset completely captures the brilliance of the score, and his imagination – which here seems insatiable – liberates his singers, who are boundlessly invested in this work; complicit in a musical resurrection. An enchantment of sorts? No. A whirlwind, rather. © Qobuz

Download not available

Download not available
Little of what Françoise Hardy recorded after the early '70s succeeded in dating well, and this LP from 1978 was one of the first of a desultory string of recordings. Produced by Gabriel Yared, J'Écoute de la Musique Saoûle places Hardy in the context of a mawkish balladeer, a position she's only rarely able to transcend with more subtle vocals. The slick, catchy title track featured Hardy purring over a variety of period effects, and "Brouillard Dans la Rue Corvisart" -- her duet with Jacques Dutronc -- is a notable lost opportunity, the song taken at a relaxed tempo that allows little of real emotion to seep through. Very occasionally, glimpses of the old, artistic Hardy can be heard; "Si Je le Retrouve un Jour" is yet another weepy ballad, though a bit of acoustic guitar allows her to sound as evocative as she did during her late-'60s peak.© John Bush /TiVo

Bertrand de Billy's live 2011 performance of Dialogues des Carmélites at Theater an der Wien is notable for the vigor of his conducting and his dramatic highlighting of the score's contrasts, which have rarely sounded so stark and tension-filled. He doesn't stint on conveying the music's generous lushness, in scenes such as the first, which is characterized by the composer's typically suave Gallic urbanity in its depiction of Blanche's aristocratic family. What comes as a revelation, though, are the outbursts of Stravinskian ruggedness in the orchestration and harmonies that de Billy does nothing to soften, which are especially evident in the orchestral interludes between scenes. His rhythmic control is crisp and precise, and points up the score's evocations of Baroque French opera, but he also gives the music plenty of room to breathe. The ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien delivers the drama of de Billy's vision with urgency and plays the more lyrical sections with limpid, sumptuous tone. The vocal casting is not consistently persuasive. Sally Matthews' voice is large and her vibrato is more pronounced than that of the rest of the cast, making her Blanche a far-from-typical characterization. The fact that her voice is so powerful in relation to the voices of the other singers makes for an imbalance that's at odds with the premise that Blanche is the opera's most timorous and tentative character. In a more vocally distinguished ensemble she could be highly effective because her characterization is intensely personal and deeply felt. Here, though, the other singers simply pale in comparison. The roles of the other nuns are sung without much distinctiveness, except for Hendrickje van Kerckhove's warm, luminous Sister Constance. Yann Beuron is strong and sympathetic as Blanche's brother, Le Chevalier de la Force. The sound is generally full, detailed, and clean, but the theatrical realism of the live performance doesn't compensate for the variability of balance and volume as the singers move around the stage. The excellent orchestral playing and fine choral singing by the Arnold Schoenberg Chor, and especially de Billy's assured, insightful conducting make this a recording that anyone who loves the opera will want to hear, but it would not make the best introduction for newcomers. © TiVo

In Jephté by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, György Vashegyi directs – with style and energy – another riveting account of a neglected French Baroque opera. The work, based on the Biblical tale of a conquering general obliged, by a sacred vow, to sacrifice his own kin, became an immediate success in 1732, indeed a fixture in opera life in France, receiving over a hundred performances at the Opéra alone in the three decades following its première. Montéclair and his librettist Pellegrin were open to preparing revised versions of the opera and it is the third and conclusive edition which has been worked on by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles and recorded by Vashegyi and his musicians. The central and demanding role of Iphise here is taken by Chantal Santon Jeffery, who is joined by Tassis Christoyannis as the unfortunate but successful-in-war title character, Judith van Wanroij as the bewildered but resolute mother and Thomas Dolié as the relayer of divine messages, Phinée. There is an imaginative and individual flair to Montéclair’s music, nurtured by his extensive orchestral pit experience at the Paris Opéra – and Jephté is a work of his maturity. As well as the tautness of the third edition, the fruits of all this experience are to be heard here with the Orfeo Orchestra showing its paces in zesty airs, minuets, marches and a chaconne, but also with a musettetinged pastoral celebration – this last also allows the Purcell Choir opportunities to excel; elsewhere, the choir is called on variously to represent warriors, Israelites, and companions of Iphise. © Glossa

Download not available