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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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Aller-retour

Bon Entendeur

French Music - Released June 7, 2019 | Columbia

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Duni: Le peintre amoureux de son modèle - Les deux chasseurs et la laitière

Orkester Nord

Opera - Released October 6, 2023 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet
The composer Egidio Duni is all but unknown nowadays, but he worked amidst several important currents of 18th century musical life. A Neapolitan who wrote Italian operas, he was backed by a noble patron who apparently gave him the means to move to Paris. Duni composed French operas of various types, and Denis Diderot cited him as a counterexample to Rousseau's contention that the French language was unsuited to opera. Duni would be worth hearing for his influence alone; the two short comic works recorded here were important early examples of opéra-comique, but they are also charming in their own right. In Paris, they were known not as operas but as "comédies melées d'ariettes," or comedies mixed with ariettas. Much of the dialogue is spoken, and some of that is unaccompanied, while other pieces have a light continuo-like backing. (This aspect of the notation has not survived, but the decisions made by the performers here are unobjectionable.) The texts hold up even today as pretty funny. Le peintre amoureux de son modèle ("The Painter in Love with His Model," she chooses someone her own age at the end) and Les deux chasseurs et la laitière ("The Two Hunters and the Milkmaid") have crackling sitcom dialogue. Physical album buyers will get a booklet with complete texts. The singers are not spectacular (four in one opera, three in the other), but then, they shouldn't be; what is important is that they put the text across, don't overact, and engage with the comedy. The small Orkester Nord is the right size at 23 players, and conductor Martin Wåhlberg keeps things moving along. This is a delightful release of much more than historical interest. If scores are available, collegiate groups could easily mount productions of these works.© James Manheim /TiVo

Le baptême

M

French Music - Released April 25, 1997 | Parlophone (France)

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Chapitre 7

MC Solaar

French Music - Released June 18, 2007 | Sentinel ouest

Distinctions Victoire de la musique
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Vise le ciel

Francis Cabrel

French Music - Released January 6, 2012 | Columbia

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Starmania, le spectacle (Live)

Starmania

French Music - Released October 30, 2019 | Warner (France)

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Ernest et Célestine : le voyage en Charabie (Bande originale du film)

Vincent Courtois

Film Soundtracks - Released December 14, 2022 | 22D Music

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Invisible

Berurier Noir

Punk / New Wave - Released December 5, 2006 | Archives de la zone mondiale

Starmania (Version 1988)

Starmania

French Music - Released October 30, 2019 | Warner (France)

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Les chansons d'or

Bourvil

French Music - Released November 6, 2020 | Parlophone (France)

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Coup de tête (Bande originale du film)

Pierre Bachelet

Film Soundtracks - Released June 19, 2015 | Music Box - EMPF

Prokofiev : Pierre et le loup - Symphonie Classique - Marche Op.99 - Overture Op.34

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Symphonic Music - Released January 1, 1990 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Au revoir et merci

Chanson Plus Bifluorée

French Music - Released November 12, 2021 | EPM Musique

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Récitals

Francesca Solleville

French Music - Released August 21, 2020 | EPM Musique

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Les Incontournables (Volume III)

Vladimir Cosma

Film Soundtracks - Released October 26, 2010 | Larghetto

My World

Jul

Miscellaneous - Released December 4, 2015 | D'Or et de Platine

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Le coup de folie

Thierry Pastor

French Music - Released January 1, 1982 | Wagram Music

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Solitudes A Deux

Johnny Hallyday

French Music - Released January 1, 1978 | Universal Music Division Mercury Records