Ici Paris 28 Mars 2018

Édouard Lalo - Le Roi d'Ys - French Broadcasting Orchestra, André Cluytens (2018) {Erato-Warner Classics rec 1957, Mono}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 506 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 254 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 15 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1957, 2018 Erato / Parlophone / Warner Classics | 0190295734855 | Mono
Classical / Romantic / Opera

Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys draws on the same Breton myth of a submerged city as Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie. A great success at its 1888 premiere at Paris’s Opéra Comique, it even reached the Metropolitan Opera, New York, but its current rarity on the world’s stages makes this classic 1957 recording still more treasurable. The performers’ Gallic credentials are impeccable, even though both Rita Gorr and André Cluytens were natives of Flanders. Like soprano Janine Micheau and tenor Henri Legay, Cluytens enjoyed close links to the Opéra Comique, spending six years as its music director.

Coming in at a tidy three hours and eight minutes, Donizetti’s huge Les Martyrs, composed (or adapted) for Paris in 1840, is here presented in its fullest conceivable form, including ballet and many passages cut right after the first performances. The opera was a reworking of his 1838 Poliuto, composed for the San Carlo in Naples, which had been banned by the king himself, since Christian martyrdom under the Romans was found unpleasant by the censors and the king was devoutly religious.