For her first album in five years, Céline Dion returns to her native French, cutting a moody collection called Sans Attendre. Perhaps it is the relatively diminished commercial expectations of a French-only album but there's an appealing small-scale aspect to Sans Attendre; certainly it is melodramatic but it is not garishly bombastic. The production is relatively restrained and, in turn, it gives plenty of space for Dion to grandstand on these tales of heartbreak, aging, and death. These aren't songs of love; they're songs of loss, and while there is certainly an affectation to Dion's performance, there's also genuine pathos and the small scale of Sans Attendre makes for one of her better albums of recent memory.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /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

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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