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If she had been born in Tennessee rather than in Lyon, Claire Pommet would probably have been a traditional country singer who goes by the name “Apple” and who graces sad songs with her vibrant voice. But she was born in Lyon, her stage name is Pomme and it’s France that she loves. Which of course doesn’t stop her from gracing sad songs with her vibrant voice. On this second album (arranged together with Albin de la Simone and situated somewhere between folk and modern pop), Pomme rhymes with solemn. And never with monotone! Her tracks span a range of atmospheres, from the soft clarity of the hit-worthy Sequoias to the unusual liturgy that closes the album. Pomme’s songs send shivers down your spine, revolving around relatable themes - uncertainty, death and family memories - and in doing so she relieves the listener from their own problems. Whether she’s singing alone with her autoharp or surrounded by epic arrangements, Pomme is always an intimate singer. What makes her stand out from the crowd, and which undoubtedly explains her attraction, is that she always stays true to herself. The 23-year-old singer reveals deeply personal lyrics over melodies that sound a little like an old Roy Orbison record. It takes real courage to share your innermost thoughts and feelings in this way. No doubt it’s the same kind of courage that the French singer Dominique A sang about almost 30 years ago. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

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Michel Sardou is one of France's most popular singers, known both for his songs of love and ballads of social commentary. In 2006, Sardou was nearing 60, had been performing for over 40 years, and was hinting he might retire, but anyone who expected him to put the brakes on his recording career got a big surprise with his album Hors Format. Hors Format is an expansive two-disc set featuring 23 new songs from Sardou, including 17 tunes co-written by the vocalist himself.© Mark Deming /TiVo

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If she had been born in Tennessee rather than in Lyon, Claire Pommet would probably have been a traditional country singer who goes by the name “Apple” and who graces sad songs with her vibrant voice. But she was born in Lyon, her stage name is Pomme and it’s France that she loves. Which of course doesn’t stop her from gracing sad songs with her vibrant voice. On this second album (arranged together with Albin de la Simone and situated somewhere between folk and modern pop), Pomme rhymes with solemn. And never with monotone! Her tracks span a range of atmospheres, from the soft clarity of the hit-worthy Sequoias to the unusual liturgy that closes the album. Pomme’s songs send shivers down your spine, revolving around relatable themes - uncertainty, death and family memories - and in doing so she relieves the listener from their own problems. Whether she’s singing alone with her autoharp or surrounded by epic arrangements, Pomme is always an intimate singer. What makes her stand out from the crowd, and which undoubtedly explains her attraction, is that she always stays true to herself. The 23-year-old singer reveals deeply personal lyrics over melodies that sound a little like an old Roy Orbison record. It takes real courage to share your innermost thoughts and feelings in this way. No doubt it’s the same kind of courage that the French singer Dominique A sang about almost 30 years ago. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

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To say that André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry's 1784 comic opera, Richard Coeur de Lion, has a lot to answer for is something of an understatement, when it was its popular Act I air, “O Richard, O my King”, which in 1789 accidentally brought about one of the defining moments of the French Revolution: the air is sung by the imprisoned King Richard's knights who want to free him, and one night in 1789 it became the song French officers chose to sing to King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette under house arrest at Versailles after the couple turned up to greet the officers at a banquet thrown in the Royal Opera House; which in turn got interpreted by the Paris press as an anti-revolutionary act, leading to the palace being stormed and the royal couple taken away, never to return. Add the fact that Grétry was none other than Marie-Antoinette's favourite composer, and the opera was an obvious choice for the Royal Opera House's 250th anniversary season. Plus, the October 2019 production under the direction of Hervé Niquet was a wonderful one: fizzing with vivacious energy and fun, nailing its grandeur and intimacy in equal measure, all with just the right dose of heart-on-sleeve sentimentality, and from a no-exceptions superb cast of young talent - headed up by tenors Rémy Mathieu as Richard and Reinoud Van Mechelen as Blondel - supported by an on-fire Le Concert Spirituel. So, although with this live recording you don't get to enjoy the production's sumptuous late eighteenth century stage sets and concerts, the music making was of a level for it all still to be leaping out of the stereo regardless. What's more, the polished, immediate engineering has done a magnificent job of capturing the theatre's acoustics, meaning you really do feel as if you're sat there in the theatre's best seats. Then, while one might imagine that non-French speakers may get less out of the audio alone, given that the opera's action moves forwards not via sung recitatives but instead spoken texts, the reality is that the vim and melodious tones with which those spoken lines are dispatched actually amounts to a sort of music in itself. In short, thank goodness they snuck this one in before Covid, because it's a life-affirming triumph. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

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