Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset N. JOMMELLI Armida Abbandonata

ARMIDA ABBANDONATA

Le Concert Spirituel / Hervé Niquet LULLY Armide

ARMIDE

Véronique Gens / Orchestre National de Lille / Alexandre Bloch CHAUSSON Poème de l'amour et de la mer - Symphonie Op. 20

POÈME DE L'AMOUR ET DE LA MER

Véronique Gens / I Giardini NUITS

                                                                            NUITS

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar LUIGI ROSSI La Lyra d’Orfeo - Arpa Davidica

The latest album from Christina Pluhar and her instrumental ensemble L’Arpeggiata sheds new light on the chamber cantatas of 17th century Italian composer, Luigi Rossi. He wrote more than 300 of these works and Christina Pluhar’s new double album includes an impressive number of 21 world premiere recordings, which are the fruit of Christina Pluhar’s research among music manuscripts held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Vatican Library.

“These cantatas are works of rare beauty,” says Pluhar, who describes Luigi Rossi as “one of the shining lights of 17th-century Italian vocal music. Supremely inventive and extremely versatile, he juxtaposed styles within a single work, often shifting from intense recitative to mellifluous song, while also venturing into daring harmonic regions.”

She has assembled a dazzling line-up of singers to perform the cantatas: sopranos Véronique Gens and Céline Scheen, mezzo-soprano Giuseppina Bridelli, and countertenors Philippe Jaroussky, Jakub Józef Orliński and Valer Sabadus.

Luigi Rossi, born in Puglia in 1597, was highly successful in his time, serving three of the most illustrious Italian dynasties – the Borghese and Barberini families in Rome and the Medici in Florence – and subsequently France’s King Louis XIV. His L'Orfeo, which received its premiere in Paris in 1647, was among the first operas to be staged in France. Rossi is also associated with the first Parisian appearances by castrato singers – their voice-type was not integral to France’s musical traditions.

Rossi had gone to Paris in 1646, where he joined the Barberinis, exiled from Rome the previous year following controversy over their handling of Papal funds. Some of their other musicians, including several castratos, also went to France with them. In Rome they had been noted for marking important occasions with commissions for masses, oratorios and operas, among them Rossi’s Palazzo incantato (Enchanted Palace), inspired by Orlando Furioso, which enjoyed a great success in 1642.

At the time, the man who wielded the most power in France was not the King – just four years old when he came to the throne in 1643 – but his godfather and Chief Minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin, an Italian by birth, enjoyed close links with the Barberini family, which had played an important role in furthering his diplomatic career in the 1630s. He was also a great advocate of Italian style in the arts and it was thanks to him that L’Orfeo, a sumptuously scored work, was lavishly staged at the Palais-Royal before Louis XIV and his mother, Queen Anne of Austria. Rossi returned to Italy in 1650 and in due course another Italian-born composer of opera, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-87), became the musical supremo at the court of the Sun King.

Véronique Gens / Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset TRAGÉDIENNES 2

This is the second instalment of Véronique Gens's Tragédiennes series, which examines how francophone composers from the 18th and early 19th centuries dealt with the heroines of classical tragedy. Classical, in this context, means Racine as well as Greek and Roman drama, though Gens contentiously widens the definition even further at one point to include a chunk of Sacchini's Renaud, based on Tasso's Renaissance epic Gerusalemme Liberata. The programme is variable, with giants such as Gluck and Berlioz placed alongside also-rans such as Piccinni and Grétry. All of it, however, requires the ability to sing words as well as phrases, and Gens's immaculate way with a text is often as mesmerising as her ability to sustain the long sculpted lines that are a common stylistic feature among her chosen composers. There are some surprises: she sings Cassandra's music from Berlioz's Les Troyens, where we might expect to hear her as Dido; when she turns to Cherubini's Medea, for what is probably the greatest track on the disc, it is to play the sorrowing maid Neris, rather than the pathological heroine. Her accompanists are Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques, a bit lightweight in Berlioz, but startling and effective elsewhere. (Tim Ashley / The Guardian)

Véronique Gens / Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset TRAGÉDIENNES

The tragic operas of the French Baroque can be rough going for the new listener, whose eyes may glaze over when hearing about rules of French prosody, classical models, and Lully's dominance of the scene. But this single-disc recital solves any problems you may have had in encountering operatic music from Lully to Gluck. Credit soprano Véronique Gens, who has often sung lighter material and now is turning to the serious works of Rameau and his era at just the right time. Her voice is impressively versatile, with a muscular medium-wave vibrato that can easily drop off into a stage whisper or rise into anger. Credit conductor Christophe Rousset and his group Les Talens Lyriques, with their on-the-ball, sensitive accompaniment and unique catgut-scraping string sound. Credit booklet writer Jean Duron for a quick, painless introduction to the 100-year history of how French opera composers, working in the centralized musical system of the French monarchy, responded to the musical world as it changed around them. Credit the engineers from Virgin Classics, who have made the Church of Notre Dame-du-Liban in Paris into something resembling a close-up, row-five theatrical experience, and caught the powerful sense of immediacy and communication in Gens' singing. And credit whoever devised the program, which offers good-sized chunks of music from various operas, complete with overtures and other instrumental interludes, instead of a sequence of disconnected arias and random sonatas linked to the main program only by chronology. This album will earn praise from those who follow Gens closely, and for the general listener looking to hear some French Baroque opera arias it's a godsend -- the tragic heroine is a central figure of the era, and Gens and company have brought her fully to life. (James Manheim)

Véronique Gens / Susan Manoff HAHN - DUPARC - CHAUSSON Néère

The soprano Véronique Gens might be thought a natural for the French art song repertoire. But Néère, taking its title from the opening song by Reynaldo Hahn (the reference is to the Greek nymph known in English as Neaera, "white as a fine marble statue, with her rosy cheeks"), is one of just a few albums in the genre she has released. Get hold of it without delay: it's gorgeous. The French mélodie is not a high-register genre, and for a singer like Gens these songs reside in the lower part of her range, where she now brings just a bit of sultriness and smoke with devastating effect. The program includes three composers of the late 19th century who are closely related but contrasting in their individual styles: in the words of annotator Nicolas Southon "the melancholic Henri Duparc, the elegiac Ernest Chausson, the charmer Reynaldo Hahn." You could really dip in anywhere, but sample track 15, Hahn's A Chloris, for a taste of what Gens can do. The playing of accompanist Susan Manoff seems welded to Gens' vocal line, which even with all the voluptuous, erotic beauty has a kind of steely concentration that grows stronger and more impressive as the album proceeds. An absolute gem. (James Manheim)

Véronique Gens / Münchner Rundfunkorchester / Hervé Niquet VISIONS

After an album of French songs (Néère) that earned her a Gramophone Award in 2016, Véronique Gens presents her new recital, this time with orchestra, which gives her an opportunity to display the maturity of her ‘Falcon’ soprano, the central tessitura typical of French Romantic opera, which takes its name from Cornélie Falcon, who created the works of Meyerbeer and Halévy staged in the 1830s.

She pays tribute here to a number of composers whose unknown operas she was the first to reveal in projects mounted by the Palazzetto Bru Zane (which also coproduced the present recording), including David, Godard, Saint-Saëns and Halévy. The programme selects arias from all the genres in vogue in the Romantic era: opera (Saint-Saëns, Halévy, Godard, Février), opéra-comique (David), oratorio (Franck, Massenet) and the cantata for the Prix de Rome (Bizet, Bruneau). A nod to Wagner and his Tannhäuser – in its French translation of the 1860s – completes this programme conducted by a longstanding colleague of the soprano, one of the leading specialists in French music, Hervé Niquet.

Véronique Gens / Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire / John Axelrod BERLIOZ Herminie - Les Nuits d’été - RAVEL Shéhérazade

This is an absolutely wonderful program. Of course Les Nuits d’été and Shéhérazade are old discmates, most famously on an outstanding disc featuring the late, great Régine Crespin. A dramatic soprano, Crespin’s voice was quite a bit larger than the comparative lightness and purity of Gens, but these songs aren’t Wagner, and each soloist does the music full justice in her own way. Especially in Les Nuits d’été, which isn’t really a song cycle, Gens and conductor John Axelrod team up to produce a performance that actually makes you forget that the work consists of two quick numbers enclosing four long, droopy ones. “Absence” and “Au Cimetière” seldom have sounded more flowing and purposeful.

Gens’ deft handling of the poetry also pays major dividends in the long first song of Shéhérazade, a travelogue that all too easily degenerates into a sort of impressionistic, French version of “I’ve Got A Little List”. Not here, with Gens conveying an unexaggerated feeling of wonderment, ably seconded by Axelrod’s colorful accompaniments. The brief concluding songs, “La flûte enchanté” and “L’indifférent”, are sexy but not smarmy, beautifully capturing Ravel’s delicately etched vocal lines. I can’t help but think, despite wonderful performances by non-French singers (Ely Ameling especially), how much it helps to have a native speaker take the part.

However, what makes this disc particularly desirable is the presence of Herminie, an early cantata by Berlioz that’s almost always passed over in favor of the more popular La mort de Cléopâtre. Herminie is not only a very enjoyable work in its own right, but it begins with a tune that’s nothing less than the “idée fixe” that later found a home in the Symphonie fantastique. The tune returns in the middle section of the aria “Arrête! Arrête! Cher Tancrède”, where it becomes an accompaniment to the vocal line (sound sample). As with everything on this program, the work is compellingly sung by Gens and conducted with conviction. The engineering is also excellent, with Gens’ voice captured with truly striking naturalism. Highest recommendation. (David Hurwitz)

La Simphonie du Marais / Olivier Schneebeli / Ensemble Vocal Contrepoint MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER Le Massacre des Innocents - Psaumes de David

In 1987, after he had been playing with European leading Baroque ensembles, Hugo Reyne decided to create his own ensemble.
In founding La Simphonie du Marais, he hoped to share his discoveries, joys and emotions with as many as possible and to breathe life into his numerous musical projects.
An ardent defender of the French musical patrimony from Lully to Rameau, he chose a name combining the word «Simphonie», the 17th - and 18th - century synonym for instrumental ensemble, and «Le Marais» one of the most beautiful areas in Paris, representative of the Baroque era. The name was quite appropriate as La Simphonie du Marais is now eventually based in Vendée, a region of western France, whose territory is bordered by marshes, namely Le Marais Breton and Le Marais Poitevin.
La Simphonie du Marais proposes programs - concerts and performances - of symphonic music, ballets, comedies-ballets and operas that can assemble up to 70 musicians : soloists, orchestra and choir.
Hugo Reyne is also very keen on the chamber and concertante repertoire for flute, as well as outdoor music with oboe ensemble. Thus, La Simphonie du Marais displays its multi-faceted talents, and is constantly able to propose new programs.

Les Arts Florissants / William Christie DELALANDE Petits Motets

An ensemble of singers and instrumentalists specialized in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments, Les Arts Florissants are renowned the world over. Founded in 1979 by the Franco-American harpsichordist and conductor William Christie, the Ensemble, named for a short opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, has played a pioneering role in the revival of a Baroque repertoire that had long been neglected (including the rediscovery of countless treasures in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France). Today that repertoire is widely performed and admired: not only French music from the reign of Louis XIV, but also more generally European music of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Ensemble is directed by William Christie who, since 2007, has regularly passed the conductor’s baton over to British tenor Paul Agnew.

Each season Les Arts Florissants give around 100 concerts and opera performances in France—at the Philharmonie de Paris, where they are artists in residence, the Théâtre de Caen, the Opéra Comique, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Château de Versailles, as well as at numerous festivals—and are an active ambassador for French culture abroad, being regularly invited to New York, London, Edinburgh, Brussels, Vienna, Salzburg, Madrid, Barcelona, Moscow, and elsewhere.

Véronique Gens BERLIOZ Les Nuits d'Été

Berlioz's ecstatic Les nuits d'été has been recorded many times. It is curious, however, that so few of the work's prominent recordings feature French sopranos. After the great Régine Crespin, I draw a blank.

Gens is French (I assume), attractive, and still quite young. Until now, I've encountered her only on period instruments recordings, where she made a positive and characterful impression. Predictably, she and Langrée embody the French virtues of charm, grace, and evenness in these works. It would be hard to find performances less gauche and obvious than these.

Langrée's tempos throughout this CD are unusually fast. His Nuits d'été requires 26 minutes, in contrast to Crespin/ansermet (just under 31 minutes) and Janet Baker/Barbirolli (well over 31 minutes). His "Villanelle" is breathless, and several of the movements are more than a minute faster than ansermet's. As a result, the music gains freshness but loses some of its dark colors and melancholy. Also, compared to Crespin and Baker (a genuine mezzo-soprano), to say nothing of Jessye Norman and Leontyne Price (who also recorded memorable versions of Les nuits d'été in their time), Gens lacks richness in lower registers of her voice. Her characters are less grande dame, more jeune fille, and innocence overshadows experience. Gens reminds me of a romantic young girl reciting love poetry on the hillside, but not necessarily experiencing its subject first-hand. Her naturalistic readings of the French texts preclude the interpretive emphases that make performances such as Crespin's and Baker's so memorable. On the other hand, if you find Baker or Crespin forced, then Gens might satisfy you perfectly.

La mort de Cléopâtre, an early work for Berlioz, but one that displays considerable creativity and innovation, is difficult to pull off on disc, perhaps because it is so episodic. Gens/Langrée are only a minute faster than Baker/Gibson, but they find a tautness here missing from competitive recordings.

Two of the three remaining songs were included – unforgettably – on the Nuits d'été LP recorded by Eleanor Steber in 1954. Gens is a very different singer than Steber, whose big gestures and full tone are answered by Gens's complete lack of anything resembling affectation.

All in all, this is not a perfect CD, but the performances rise and fall on their own merit, not on the pale imitation of their predecessors. Anyone who loves this music will get something new out of Gens and Langrée. (Raymond Tuttle)