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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018 Breathtaking coloratura: Sabine Devieilhe offers a fascinating and beguiling programme with Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth ‘Écho’ Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini – Les belles fleurs Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor – Lucia, perdona …a; Regnava nel silenzio Halévy La Juive – Assez longtemps la crainte et la tristesse Hérold Le pré aux clercs – Jours de mon enfance Meyerbeer Robert le diable – Robert, toi que j’aime; Quand je quittai la Normandie; Va, dit-elle, va, mon enfant Rossini Guillaume Tell – Ils s’éloignent enfin Weber/Berlioz Le Freyschütz – Hélas! sans le revoir Joyce El-Khoury sop aMichael Spyres ten Hallé Orchestra / Carlo Rizzi Opera Rara F ORR252 (79’ • DDD • T/t) ’ H O T E L I L L A U M E G U : P H O T O G R A P H Y With these two discs Opera Rara moves away from its predominantly Italian repertoire into territory occupied by the Palazzetto Bru Zane and its excellent CD-cum-book series of lesser-known 19th-century French operas. Julie Dorus-Gras (1805‑96) and Gilbert Duprez (1806‑96) starred in the premieres of two operas featured here, Guido et Ginévra and Benvenuto Cellini, and one that isn’t, Donizetti’s Les martyrs. Dorus-Gras appeared in the premieres of Robert le diable and La Juive; Duprez in Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Lucia di Lammermoor, Jérusalem and many others. Joyce El‑Khoury and Michael Spyres perform arias associated with their respective forebears and – a nice touch – each sings in a duet on the other’s recording. The booklets include a background article on the original singers, an introduction to each item, and full texts and translations. Rosie Ward quotes Berlioz’s praise of Duprez’s ‘chest voice … with … a beauty of sound for which nothing had prepared us’. She doesn’t quote Rossini’s comment that Duprez’s top C, the famous ut de poitrine, sounded like the squawk of a capon having its throat cut. Nothing of the sort can be levelled at Michael Spyres, who delivers Cs, Ds and, in Le lac des fées, an astonishing top E flat with overwhelming power and confidence. He begins with the French version of Otello’s ‘Ah! sì, per voi già sento’: if this is indeed Othello’s first utterance, it makes for a more commanding entrance than the recitative that precedes it in the original. Equally martial, with similar dotted rhythms, is the aria from Rosmonda. With Halévy’s Guido et Ginévra we are on really unfamiliar ground. Like Romeo, Guido mourns at his beloved’s tomb (and, like Juliet, Ginévra is not really dead). His air begins with a mournful trumpet solo in B flat minor and ends surprisingly in B major. The duet from the following act is powerfully dramatic. Spyres is magnificent throughout the disc, lacking only the honeyed tone of Nicolai Gedda where Benvenuto Cellini yearns for the 38 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018 Click on album covers to buy from gramophone.co.uk
page 39
GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018 life of a shepherd leading his herd (sic!) to pasture. It’s curious that Lucie de Lammermoor doesn’t get a look-in, as Duprez certainly sang his part in French as well as Italian. Like Dorus-Gras, Joyce El‑Khoury takes the part of both Isabelle and Alice in Robert le diable. She is particularly suited to the gentle Alice, whose ‘Va, dit-elle’ anticipates Micaëla’s ‘Et tu lui diras’ in Carmen by more than 40 years. Mathilde’s air from Guillaume Tell is just as simple and unaffected. El‑Khoury catches Agathe’s tenderness in ‘Ma prière’ (‘Leise, leise’) from Le Freyschütz and phrases ‘I miei sospiri’ in Lucia to perfection (not quite matched by Spyres). Sometimes she sacrifices her consonants to beauty of tone: not too serious a drawback. Carlo Rizzi and the Hallé provide lively accompaniments, with some fine solos. Both discs are a must for lovers of the repertoire. Richard Lawrence (10/17) ‘Mirages’ Berlioz La mort d’Ophéliea Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande – Mes longs cheveux descendent. La romance d’Ariela Delage Quatre Poèmes hindous Delibes Lakmé – Bell Song; Flower Duetb; Tu m’as donné le plus douz rêve Koechlin Le voyage, Op 84 No 2a Massenet Thaïs – Celle qui vient est plus bellec Messager Madame Chrysanthème – Le jour sous le soleil béni Stravinsky Le rossignol – Chanson du Rossignol Thomas Hamlet – À vos jeux, mes amis Sabine Devieilhe sop with cJodie Devos sop bc Marianne Crebassa mez aAlexandre Tharaud pf Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth Erato F 9029 57677-2 (64’ • DDD) Includes texts and translations You’d be forgiven for assuming that this release, featuring a French coloratura soprano in repertoire that includes the Hamlet Mad Scene, an extract from Thaïs and hit numbers from Lakmé, might be a conventional affair. You’d be wrong. As a quick glance down the rest of the track-listing shows, this adventurous programme places those familiar showpieces into the most fascinating of contexts, exploring, to quote Sabine Devieilhe’s brief note in the booklet, ‘the fantasy image of a different country’ that was such an obsession in fin de siècle France. Those Lakmé numbers can rarely have sounded fresher or more original, with Devieilhe joined by Marianne Crebassa in a supremely seductive account of the Flower Duet and offering some breathtaking coloratura in the Bell Song. And the latter, in particular, is heard in an entirely different light when juxtaposed with Maurice Delage’s remarkable Quatres Poèmes hindous (1912) – almost ethnographic in their attempts to capture the strange sounds of an exotic world. Similarly, the programme underlines that weird orientalist episode that turns up half way through Ophélie’s Mad Scene (at 7’20” here) and forces one to hear Thaïs’s charmeuse afresh – we have just that small episode from Massenet’s wonderful score, rather than any of the title character’s numbers. Stravinsky makes a guest appearance with the brief Nightingale’s Song from Le rossignol, here in its French version. ‘Le voyage’ from Charles Koechlin’s voice-and-piano setting of Tristan Klingsor’s Shéhérazade poems serves as a beguiling intermediary palate-cleanser, as do Berlioz’s own delicate La mort d’Ophélie and Debussy’s Le romance d’Ariel – all three are superbly accompanied by Alexandre Tharaud. The briefest wisp of Pelléas et Mélisande – sung with disarming artlessness – takes us into another strange, distant world between the different easts evoked by Messager and Delibes, minimal gaps between tracks allowing them almost to blend into one another. The performances themselves are terrific. François-Xavier Roth exploits the period instruments of Les Siècles to emphasise the sheer variety of orchestral colours on display (captured in excellent sound) and accompanies with sensitivity. Devieilhe, meanwhile, has a wonderfully instinctive and apparently effortless way with this music. The voice is on the light side but marries seductive delicacy with astonishing pinpoint accuracy, as well as an ability to turn on a sixpence from cool, quasi-instrumental purity to seductive warmth. All in all, this refreshing, fascinating and beguiling album is impossible to resist. Highly recommended. Hugo Shirley (12/17) ‘Visions’ Bizet Clovis et Clotilde – Prière, ô doux souffle de l’ange! Bruneau Geneviève – Seigneur! Est-ce bien moi que vous avez choisie? David Lalla-Roukh – Sous le feuillage sombre Février Gismonda – Dit-elle vrai? Franck Les Béatitudes – Moi, du Sauveur je suis la Mère. Rédemption – Le flot se lève Godard Les Guelfes – Là-bas, vers le palais Halévy La magicienne – Ce sentier vous conduit vers le couvent voisin Massenet – La Vierge – Le dernier sommeil de la Vierge: Extase de la Vierge Niedermeyer Stradella – Ah!…Quel songe affreux! Saint-Saëns Étienne Marcel – Ah! Laissez-moi, ma mère! Véronique Gens sop Munich Radio Orchestra / Hervé Niquet Alpha F ALPHA279 (56’ • DDD) Includes texts and translation This tremendous, heady disc finds Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet examining sub-cults of visionaries, saints and mystics in some of the less familiar 19th- and early 20th-century French operas and oratorios. It’s provocative stuff, its emotional – at times emotive – impact immeasurably heightened by very careful programming. Gens opens with Bruneau’s Geneviève – heroine of his eponymous 1881 Prix de Rome cantata – responding, Joan of Arc-like, to a divine call to save France from its enemies, then broadens the psychological terrain to encompass the Gothic frissons of Niedermeyer’s Stradella and the mystico-erotic contemplation of a very human lover in Godard’s Les Guelfes. The climax is reached with Massenet’s depiction of the Virgin Mary’s ecstatic vision of Paradise after the Assumption, a disquietingly sensual passage, given the context, that balletomanes will recognise at once as the final pas de deux from Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. Thereafter the mood becomes calmer and the recital closes with reflections on the efficacy of prayer from Bizet’s Clovis et Clotilde (another Prix de Rome cantata) and Franck’s Rédemption. Gens and Niquet throw themselves into all this with an engrossing mix of abandon and restraint. Gens’s trademark combination of purity of utterance and smoky tone speaks volumes in a repertory in which ‘religion [is] the palliative for carnal love’, as the booklet notes put it. Much of the time, she’s sparing and introverted, which means that the big emotional outpourings are all the more overwhelming when we reach them. In Bizet, Godard and the Virgin Mary’s aria from Les Béatitudes, it’s the long-breathed, hovering lines that send shivers down your spine. But real turmoil erupts when Léonor, the heroine of Stradella, wakes from a terrifying nightmare and senses she is being punished by an inscrutable God. And the way Gens’s voice surges in rapture through the Massenet is simply breathtaking. Niquet is just as committed, just as insightful, and the Munich Radio Orchestra’s contribution is first rate. At 56 minutes, the disc is on the short side, but any more would, I suspect, feel like overkill. I also found the emotional trajectory gains even greater force from reversing the playing order of the last two tracks, ending with Bizet rather than Franck. It’s a spectacular achievement, though: whatever you do, don’t hold back. Tim Ashley (7/17) gramophone.co.uk Click on album covers to buy from GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018 39

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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018

Breathtaking coloratura: Sabine Devieilhe offers a fascinating and beguiling programme with Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth

‘Écho’ Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini – Les belles fleurs Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor – Lucia, perdona …a; Regnava nel silenzio Halévy La Juive – Assez longtemps la crainte et la tristesse Hérold Le pré aux clercs – Jours de mon enfance Meyerbeer Robert le diable – Robert, toi que j’aime; Quand je quittai la Normandie; Va, dit-elle, va, mon enfant Rossini Guillaume Tell – Ils s’éloignent enfin Weber/Berlioz Le Freyschütz – Hélas! sans le revoir Joyce El-Khoury sop aMichael Spyres ten Hallé Orchestra / Carlo Rizzi Opera Rara F ORR252 (79’ • DDD • T/t)

’ H O T E

L

I L L A U M E

G U

:

P H O T O G R A P H Y

With these two discs Opera Rara moves away from its predominantly Italian repertoire into territory occupied by the Palazzetto Bru Zane and its excellent

CD-cum-book series of lesser-known 19th-century French operas. Julie Dorus-Gras (1805‑96) and Gilbert Duprez (1806‑96) starred in the premieres of two operas featured here, Guido et Ginévra and Benvenuto Cellini, and one that isn’t, Donizetti’s Les martyrs. Dorus-Gras appeared in the premieres of Robert le diable and La Juive; Duprez in Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Lucia di Lammermoor, Jérusalem and many others. Joyce El‑Khoury and Michael Spyres perform arias associated with their respective forebears and – a nice touch – each sings in a duet on the other’s recording.

The booklets include a background article on the original singers, an introduction to each item, and full texts and translations. Rosie Ward quotes Berlioz’s praise of Duprez’s ‘chest voice … with … a beauty of sound for which nothing had prepared us’. She doesn’t quote Rossini’s comment that Duprez’s top C, the famous ut de poitrine,

sounded like the squawk of a capon having its throat cut. Nothing of the sort can be levelled at Michael Spyres, who delivers Cs, Ds and, in Le lac des fées, an astonishing top E flat with overwhelming power and confidence. He begins with the French version of Otello’s ‘Ah! sì, per voi già sento’: if this is indeed Othello’s first utterance, it makes for a more commanding entrance than the recitative that precedes it in the original. Equally martial, with similar dotted rhythms, is the aria from Rosmonda. With Halévy’s Guido et Ginévra we are on really unfamiliar ground. Like Romeo, Guido mourns at his beloved’s tomb (and, like Juliet, Ginévra is not really dead). His air begins with a mournful trumpet solo in B flat minor and ends surprisingly in B major. The duet from the following act is powerfully dramatic. Spyres is magnificent throughout the disc, lacking only the honeyed tone of Nicolai Gedda where Benvenuto Cellini yearns for the

38 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018

Click on album covers to buy from gramophone.co.uk

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