Composer: Jacques Offenbach
Performer: Karine Deshayes
Orchestra: Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen
Conductor: Jean-Pierre Haeck
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA553
Release: 2019
Size: 521 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Les Boules de Neige
01. Ouverture
02. La Valse du divorce
Six Fables de La Fontaine
03. Le berger et la mer
04. Le corbeau et le renard
05. La cigale et la fourmi
06. La laitière et le pot au lait
07. Le rat de ville et le rat des champs
08. Le savetier et le financier
Les bavards
09. Ouverture
10. C’est l’Espagne
11. Les deux Aveugles: Overture
12. Madame Favart – Ouverture
13. Monsieur Choufleuri: overture
14. Schueler-Polka
A grasshopper, a milkmaid’s pail, a shepherd, a fox, a country mouse, a cobbler… These are just some of the diverse and varied characters from the famous Fables that Jacques Offenbach decided to set to music in 1842, some 150 years after they were written by Jean de La Fontaine. With their vivid texts featuring talking animals and stock characters, the Fables offered an allegorical and didactic way of alluding to the court and the mores of the time. Offenbach chose six of the 240 Fables of La Fontaine to set as mélodies. Here the conductor Jean-Pierre Haeck presents them in his own orchestration performed by the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen and the mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes, who excels in this repertory. To complete the programme, the singer performs numbers from Offenbach’s opéra-bouffe Boule-de-neige and the orchestra plays movements from the ballet Le Papillon, offering listeners a recording as refined as it is witty.