Patricia Petibon MELANCOLÍA Spanish Arias and Songs

Spain, and its music and art, have long had a special appeal for Patricia Petibon: “From an early age I was intrigued and fascinated by Spanish culture, by the way the excessive and the subtle are inextricably linked. It glorifies emotions with pride and, at the same time, refinement. It’s a culture that comes from the earth, from the people. Everything about it appealed to me, and in my early recitals I liked to insert some Spanish songs into my American and French programmes. Then, when I went to Madrid to sing in Dialogues des Carmélites, I met the stage director Emilio Sagi, and that led to my opportunity to enter the world of zarzuela. It was Sagi who directed me in Torroba’s Luisa Fernanda in Vienna, where it was wonderful to be singing alongside Plácido Domingo. I found myself surrounded by performers from all kinds of Spanish-speaking backgrounds; they noticed how interested I was in their culture, and that’s how we made a connection, and I learned from real specialists. Spanish artists have a physical sense of the music: for them, it draws its strength from the body, and there I can’t resist making a connection with Baroque music, with dance, of course, and extreme characters – think of Médée or Armide. It also shares the same kind of quality of roughness, of rawness, and voices are used to express emotions, not just to make a lovely sound.”
“I spent a long time thinking about the programme for this disc, creating a mixture of music, and finally I settled on one unifying idea: the feeling of melancholy, which is a reflection of Spain itself. The disc is a journey through different styles, but through folk music as well, which has a strong presence on the disc. The theatrical element is very important, too, and at the centre is the character of Salud in Falla’s La vida breve. She embodies the melancholy of the title, the loss of hope. Melancholy is a balance in life, a sadness that binds us to death. Salud represents the darkest side of melancholy that tends toward tragedy. But this sort of melancholy can also depict the radiance of childhood, of joy and laughter. What I wanted to explore through this disc was the journey between these two poles.”