Performer: Benjamin Bernheim
Orchestra: PKF – Prague Philharmonia
Conductor: Emmanuel Villaume
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 2019
Size: 1.23 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Massenet: Werther – “Pourquoi me réveiller, ô souffle du printemps?”
02. Donizetti: L’elisir d’amore – “Una furtiva lagrima”
Gounod: Roméo et Juliette
03. “L’amour! l’amour! oui, son ardeur a troublé”
04. “Ah! lève-toi, soleil!”
Verdi: La Traviata
05. “Lunge da lei”
06. “De’ miei bollenti spiriti”
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
07. Introduction to Lensky’s Aria
08. “Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis”
Verdi: Rigoletto
09. “Ella mi fu rapita!”
10. “Parmi veder le lagrime”
Massenet: Manon
11. “Instant charmant”
12. “En fermant les yeux”
Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor
13. “Tombe degli avi miei”
14. “Fra poco a me ricovero”
Gounod: Faust
15. “Quel trouble inconnu me pénètre?”
16. “Salut! demeure chaste et pure”
Verdi: Luisa Miller
17. “Oh! fede negar potessi”
18. “Quando le sere al placido”
Godard, B: Dante, Op. 111
19. “Ah! de tous mes espoirs”
20. “Tout est fini”
21. Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust, Op. 24 – “Nature immense, impénétrable et fière”
22. Puccini: La Bohème – “Che gelida manina”
Recorded: 2018, 2019
Recording Venue: Smetana Hall, Municipal House, Prague
The first thing to say is that Bernheim has an immaculate natural voice – rich, flexible, mellifluous and nuanced. He is at his very best in French items from the later 19th century…Moreover, throughout the disc he is supported by a superbly controlled and responsive orchestra.
Bernheim is a superb singer. The voice is handsome and beautifully regulated, and he sails through this taxing selection with ringing tone, true intonation and a seamless technique…It’s difficult to imagine many people today, if any, singing these arias better. But at the same time the selection suggests a lack of temperament.
On show throughout is a lyric tenor in complete command of precious qualities securely combined: youthful freshness; fine-grained ‘solar’ timbre, beaming light and warmth in all registers; ease across a wide tessitura and range of dynamics; purposeful amalgamation of tone and word; and an approach at once romantic, muscular and blessedly sure of aim to full-flow outpouring and high climaxes.
Impeccably sung and vividly characterised, this is a strong calling-card indeed from the young Frenchman, whose bright, focused sound put me a little in mind of the young Piotr Beczała or (rewinding a few decades) Georges Thill. The real magic happens in his native repertoire, particularly the extracts from Werther and the two Faust operas, but everything here is classily done – if only Alfredo’s aria from Traviata had been included in full.
He looks set to be the outstanding French tenor of our time. The arias from Werther, Roméo et Juliette, Manon, Faust, Berlioz’s Damnation and a rarity, Godard’s Dante, reveal a patrician artist whose marrying of words and tone brings a special magic to this underrated music…his native repertoire is golden-age singing. This is a disc for every opera lover’s Christmas wish list.
Bernheim’s voice is fluid, supple and incredibly easy on the ear: he could sing a shopping list and make it sound elegant. There is a tendency to anonymity in his interpretation – his characters aren’t hugely delineated – but if you get the chance to see him live then rush. Emmanuel Villaume conducts with sensitivity.
The Frenchman’s shimmering tenor glows in his native repertory.