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L'amour de loin (2000) is Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's first opera, but the mastery of its memorably dramatic music demonstrates incontrovertibly that she is a born opera composer. The opera has had numerous international productions and in 2003 it received the Grawemeyer Award, the most prestigious international award for composition. Saariaho was inspired to write an opera after seeing the 1992 Salzburg Festival production of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise, so it is not surprising that her first effort would be more concerned with introspection than with conventionally operatic drama. The French libretto, by Armin Maalouf, deals with twelfth century troubadour Jaufre Rudel, and the legend of his love for the Countess of Tripoli. Separated by thousands of miles, the two had an erotically charged but unconsummated relationship, which in the opera is sustained by messages carried between them by a Pilgrim. The poet finally makes the voyage to meet his love, only to die in her arms. For a work on such an intimate subject with such an understated dramatic profile, L'amour de loin feels like a very big opera. Saariaho is dealing with large emotions, and what it lacks in outward theatricality is more than made up for in the vividness and depth with which it probes the psychology of its characters. The orchestra and chorus are vehicles for making audible the lovers' states of mind, which are frequently roiling with conflict and anxiety, and the music is consequently turbulent, powerful, and often very loud. (It's closer in tone to Tristan and Isolde than to Pelléas et Mélisande, two tragedies of thwarted love that it resembles in some ways.) Saariaho's counterintuitive take on Maalouf's intensely inward libretto works brilliantly. The ravishing orchestral palette, deft blend of Medieval and contemporary musical traditions, and gorgeous choral and vocal writing make this is a work that seems destined to endure. Saariaho's text setting is exceptionally graceful and limber, and it's performed beautifully by the superlative singers on this recording. Mezzo-soprano Marie-Anne Todorovitch's shapely vocal interpretation invests the Pilgrim with so much nuanced individuality that the listener cannot help being drawn to the character. Her supple, infinitely colorful voice is responsive to the most subtle dramatic cues in the text and music; this is the kind of fully realized performance that opera composers dream of. The same can be said for soprano Ekaterina Lekhina and baritone Daniel Belcher as the lovers; the startling purity and focus of their voices, and the intensity and subtlety with which they inhabit their roles, make them absolutely compelling, both musically and dramatically. Kent Nagano leads Rundfunkchor Berlin and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin in a luminous reading of the richly variegated score. Harmonia Mundi's sound is pure, full, and warmly atmospheric. This outstanding performance of L'amour de loin should be of strong interest not only to fans of contemporary opera, but of new music in general, and to lovers of bel canto singing. Highly recommended. © TiVo

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Nine extraordinary meditations by one of the twentieth century’s musical titans, performed on the magnificent King’s College Chapel organ by former organ scholar Richard Gowers. Written in 1935, La Nativité du Seigneur is one of Messiaen’s most popular organ works, and a piece that helped to establish the then 27 year-old as an important figure in contemporary music. Premiered in February 1936 at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris, where Messiaen was organist for more than sixty years, the debut performance was shared between three of his close friends; with Daniel-Lesur, Jean Langlais and Jean-Jacques Grunenwald each tackling three movements. A testament to Messiaen’s devout Catholicism, each movement follows a portion of the Christmas story, from the Virgin Birth to Epiphany, with the number of movements symbolic of the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy. Significantly, the work contains early examples of Messiaen’s signature compositional elements, such as birdsong, rhythmic inspiration from Hindustani and Carnatic musical traditions, and the ‘modes of limited transportation’, which he would later publish in "La technique de mon langage musical". Born in 1994, Richard Gowers is a British organist, pianist and conductor. After becoming a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists at the age of 17, he won first prize at the 2013 Northern Ireland International Organ Competition and studied at the Mendelssohn Conservatoire in Leipzig. From 2014 to 2017 he held the distinguished position of organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge and in September 2017 he became Chapel Choir Organist at the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban. His career as a concert organist has seen him perform in prestigious venues around the world, including Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral. © King's College

In 1743, two years before Rameau’s Platée, Boismortier created an extraordinarily modern and madcap "comic ballet", Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse. As the exuberant plotunfurls, Cervantes’ hero encounters monsters, enchanters, princesses and people from Japan, making for plenty of offbeat and audacious dances and choruses. Musical beautyrubs shoulders with satirical and irreverent comedy. A choice work for Hervé Niquet, who leads his Concert Spirituel with unparalleled energy! © Château de Versailles Spectacles

Recordings of Offenbach's 1868 operetta La Périchole, here performed in an 1873 revision, have been rather uncommon. True, it doesn't contain any of the big Offenbach hits, and its Peruvian setting, with a variety of Spanish dances and chinoiserie standing in for whatever music might have been heard in colonial Peru, seems increasingly preposterous as time goes on. However, verisimilitude has never been a requirement in operetta, and this story of the titular street singer (who was an actual historical individual) pursued by a sleazy colonial administrator hits a lot of the bases. Anglophone listeners will note that Arthur Sullivan surely knew this music inside and out, and replicated the combination of limpid songs for the heroine and quite a few sharp narrative choruses. This production, recorded live in 2018 at the Festival Radio France Occitanie in Montpellier, is nothing fancy, but that is its charm. La Périchole is nicely sung by a mezzo-soprano with the delightful name of Aude Extrémo, who resists the temptation to ham it up (sample her drunk scene, "Ah, quel diner je viens de faire") and inhabits the role well. The large cast is consistent, and conductor Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre, far from their Baroque origins, keep things moving in a lively way. One gets the sense that Offenbach would have been fully satisfied, and the recording is a must for any operetta fan.© TiVo

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

Modern travelers who make their pilgrimages to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, think of the origins of the practice as medieval. But in fact the pilgrimage has been an unbroken tradition ever since the legend grew (even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that there are factual problems with it) that the remains of St. James were buried there. This release from soprano and harpist Arianna Savall with the Belgian historical-instrument group La Fenice is illustrated handsomely with a map of the roads leading from various parts of France to Compostela. It's quite detailed, almost a Rand McNally road map of its time, and this in the year 1648, the year the Thirty Years' War ended. Director Jean Tubéry, who also plays the flutes in the wind-heavy arrangements, points out that he's not trying to create a historical reconstruction of music that French pilgrims of 1648 would have heard; some of it is chronologically or geographically wrong. The association is looser, with a program of music somehow connected with St. James or with stops along the way (the Rhône region, Languedoc and Gascony, Aragon and Castile, and finally the gates of Santiago). Many of the sections are introduced by church bells, but both sacred and secular pieces are included, with a few instrumental dances and plenty of the percussion that's still missing from a great many albums of music of this period. The program's place on the continuum running from historical to speculative is a bit slippery, and there's no real indication of why some of the music was included. But Savall is in fine voice; much of the music, especially the pieces in the French and Spanish regional languages, is both unfamiliar and attractive; and the sense of a musical journey comes through. Recommended, especially for listeners making any version of the France-to-Spain pilgrimage.© TiVo