Berlioz: Béatrice et Bénédict

Advantages: Colourful and always exciting
Disadvantages: absolutely none

...works for the state, the Requiem or "Grande messe des morts" and "Te Deum" feature enormous orchestras and choruses (the Requiem's Dies Irae alone featuring batteries of trumpets in all four corners of the church blasting away at each other and are then succeeded by the simultaneous drumming of eight pairs of timpani, creating an unforgettable wave of sound). As an opera composer he had less of a success. His first opera, "Les Francs-Juges" only exists in fragments; Benvenuto Cellini was a total failure; the four hour "Les Troyens" after Virgil's Aeneas, was so huge that it was forced to be separated into two parts, and was even then performed only in part at the wholly unsuitable Opéra Comique, only receiving its first complete performance in the 1950's, a hundred years later; and the Shakespeare-based "Béatrice et Benedict" came so late... 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

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