Berlioz: Beatice et Benedict

Advantages: Colourful and always exciting
Disadvantages: absolutely none

...GENERAL HISTORY LEADING TO SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE Hector Berlioz was a French composer, born in 1803 in a little village of La Côte Saint-André. At a very early age he learned to play the flute and guitar and composed a number of little songs, two flute quintets and even a small opera "Estelle et Némorin" (Estelle incidentally being his first love interest, when he was only 13 and she in her late twenties). His father wanted to make a doctor out of him and sent him to Paris, but Hector soon dropped out of the medical school, not being able to stomach the atmosphere of the profession. He joined the Paris Conservatoire instead and soon became enthralled with the music of Gluck and Beethoven, with the literature and poetry of Virgil and the plays of Shakespeare. It was in a Shakespeare play (Hamlet) that he first saw an actress named... Read review

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Advantages: Susan Graham sings nearly everything
Disadvantages: She doesn't live next door to me...

...Rorem is a rather under-rated composer. These are his tone-poems that describe very specific pictures. Here Ms Graham sings it as if not only is she seeing the snowed up woods or the sidewalk cafes on the streets of Paris in the early morning, but as she is in those pictures herself. BERLIOZ: Beatrice et Benedict: 12. Comment le dedain pourrait-il mourir? 13. Dieu! Que viens-je entendre? From a witty opera based on Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing,' Ms Graham sings Beatrice's arias with flare and effectively accenting just the right phrases to highlight conflicting emotions. Her pianissimo is beautifully smooth and her French diction is faultless. HEGGIE: Dead Man Walking: 14. This journey to Christ 15. Who will walk with me? 16. Dead Man Walking! 17. He will gather us around Susan Graham created the role of Sister Helene... Read review

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Advantages: The experience of getting inside an artistic head
Disadvantages: French not quite idiomatic

...This 1995 CD was the Bulgarian mezzo soprano opera singer Vesselina Kasarova's first solo album. She was only 30 years old then, but age is not necessarily the arbitor of thoughtfulness. It is telling that despite of the French's tendency to be very picky of how their language is sung, this CD won the Prix Maurice Ravel despite of some pretty iffy French intonations. This singer is just so expressive and so mesmerizing in her singing of the emotionally loaded French song cycles (all quite over-recorded by all the prominent artists already, especially for the Berlioz 'Summer Nights' Cycle), that imperfect French diction is really an insignificant flaw. There is a detached quality to this recital. As if she is lost in her own thoughts, not quite aware of the presence of an audience (or the recording microphone, in this case). Listening... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful