Composer: Hector Berlioz, Henri Duparc, Gilbert Duprez, César Auguste Franck, Benjamin Louis Paul Godard, Ferencz Liszt, Jules Emile Frederic Massenet, André Messager, Francis Lucien Joseph Thomé
Performer: Alphonse Cemin, Raphaël Jouan, Kaëlig Boché, Karine Deshayes, Marie-Laure Garnier
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA657
Release: 2020
Size: 1.28 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Massenet: Elégie
02. Berlioz: La belle Isabeau, conte pendant l’orange, Op. 19 No. 5
03. Liszt: Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, S293
04. Duparc: La Fuite
05. Godard: Berceuse from Jocelyn
06. Doche: L’ange
07. Duprez: Nita la gondolière
08. Godard: Te souviens-tu
09. Berlioz: La captive, Op. 12
10. Massenet: Soleil couchant
11. Monpou: Piquillo – Trio “Ah ! Pour votre assistance, seigneur, j’ai l’espérance”
12. Varney: Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge – Chœur des Girondins
13. Messager: Ah! Ah! L’abbé, je l’ai mis en déroute (from Le Chevalier d’Harmental)
14. Guion: Amour, printemps – Printemps, Amour !
15. Franck: Le Sylphe M73
16. Reber: Le jardin
17. Thomé: Le jardin
‘There are few people as susceptible to certain musical beauties as I am; the more learned and complicated the instrumentation, the less I sense it, the faster it escapes me; on the contrary, if a simple and melancholic motif appears, I feel flooded with infinite sweetness’, Alexandre Dumas once said. To mark the 150th anniversary of the great writer’s death, this album celebrates Dumas and music: ‘Despite the incompatibility of poetry and music, the origin of which lay, he felt, in the excessive proximity between the two,’ writes Claude Schopp, the eminent Dumas specialist, in the booklet that accompanies this recording, ‘Alexandre Dumas agreed to collaborate with composers, writing opera libretti for Hippolyte Monpou and Ambroise Thomas. . . . The list of those who borrowed verses from Dumas’s pen is a mixture of obscure and illustrious names’: Hector Berlioz, Joseph Doche, Gilbert Duprez, César Franck, Franz Liszt, Henri Reber, Francis Thomé, Alphonse Varney among them. This programme presents an anthology of those settings, coupled with mélodies by Jules Massenet, Henri Duparc and Benjamin Godard.