Pierre Jourdan, Theatre Imperial de Compiegne Ambroise Thomas: Le Songe D'une Nuit D'ete (2005 1994)

Ambroise Thomas wrote this comic opera, which has little to do with A Midsummer Night's Dream; it includes Falstaff, Elizabeth I and Shakespeare all in a strange literary interaction. Thomas fused many of the operatic styles of his day in a skillfully written score. The piece was revived at Compiègne in 1994 to mark the opening of the Channel Tunnel. Noted director and producer Pierre Jourdan has been staging opera since 1968. In 1988, he founded the Théâtre Français de la Musique and the association Pour le Théâtre Impérial in the Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne. Every year, he directs and produces different lyric works with the mission to rediscover the French musical and lyrical repertoire from the post-baroque to today and to restore an authentic French style to the singers and the orchestras which accompany them. These productions have been triumphantly welcomed by the public and critics alike.

Adolphe Adam composed more than 70 operas, of which a small handful still enjoy some currency on the French stage; most have been little seen outside of their native land and are seldom recorded, and some have never been revived since their first productions, if they were so given. This may lead some to believe these works must either be hopelessly dated or "too French" to travel. The video company Kultur, however, is helping expand that narrow view of French theater through its L'Opera Français series, which by 2008 was up to eight titles. This series really fills a major void in the operatic repertoire and makes accessible to international audiences the distinctively French form of opéra-comique, a frothy, deliberately silly type of entertainment that is about as close to "popular" culture as high culture ever gets.

Halevy's Noé is another one of those operas that is rather obscure, but doesn't deserve to be. One may criticise it for the story stretching slightly longer than it needed to be, and occasionally one can tell that it was left incomplete, and the music not having any memorable arias (similar problems with Clari), but the story itself is quite good, after all it is based on the biblical story of Noah and the music is beautiful, it is unmistakably Halevy but Bizet's (who was responsible for completing the opera) style does come through in the orchestration.

Hayedée ou Le secret (literally "Hayedée or the secret") was created on 28th December 1847 at the Théâtre de l'Opéra Comique (literally "The Comic Opera Theatre") in the second Salle Favart (Favart Hall).
The libretto is inspired from the new Russian Six and four translated by Prosper Mérimée. The final choice for the name Hayedée may be linked to the dazzling success of Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas (1845) with Hayedée as the heroine. This name also sounds like Aïaut;da which was chosen later by Ghislanzoni and Verdi. Hayedée can be counted among Auber's best scores.

Le domino noir (The Black Domino) is an opéra comique by the French composer Daniel Auber, first performed on 2 December 1837 by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse in Paris. The libretto to the three-act piece is by Auber's usual collaborator, Eugène Scribe. It was one of Auber's most successful works, clocking up 1,207 performances by 1909. It received its UK premiere in 1838 and appeared in the USA the following year. Some of Auber's music has a Spanish flavour to reflect its setting.

It's fascinating to hear this earlier treatment of the story so famously set by Massenet and Puccini; Patrick Fournillier conducts a very engaging performance. Picture and sound are good, as they are for all Disque Dom releases.

Never mind the Symphonie espagnole and Le roi d’Ys, Edouard Lalo is the last of the great unknowns in 19th-century French music. His mature instrumental works combine the wisdom drawn from his professional playing experience with the familiar flair for rhythm and colour. They are likely to transform any opinion you may hold: it isn’t often that the inspiration of Beethoven was so well digested in France. The first two trios don’t really count as mature, and although they contain fine things, especially in the scherzos, their characteristic soul, sweep and dash are often clumsily handled. With No. 3, form and feeling are as one, the first movement’s surges integral to its progress to a hushed end, while the slow movement builds a powerful span from a sustained melody. Between them comes the irresistible piece better known in Lalo’s later arrangement as a Scherzo for orchestra. These performances have the necessary robustness without stinting on delicacy.

Les diamants de la couronne is a delightful and unfortunately neglected opera by French composer Daniel François Esprit Auber of which I believe to exist only this recording, which fortunately had been recorded both in audio and in video formats. The story centres on a queen of Portugal who, in the mid eighteenth century, sells the authentic crown jewels to replenish the exhausted coffers of State and has them counterfeit by some brigands to conceal the ruse. For this reason, she disguises herself as Catarina, pretending to be the niece of the chief of the brigands (Rebolledo) and (to spicy the story) falls in mutual love with the young Don Henrique de Sandoval, nephew of the minister of police and already promised to his cousin Diana, who, for her part, has already fallen in love with Don Sebastian. After some ups and downs, the usual happy ending will satisfy the protagonists’ wishes.

L'heure espagnole is a French one-act opera from 1911, described as a comédie musicale, with music by Maurice Ravel to a French libretto by Franc-Nohain, based on Franc-Nohain's 1904 play ('comédie-bouffe') of the same name. The opera, set in Spain in the 18th century, is about a clockmaker whose unfaithful wife attempts to make love to several different men while he is away, leading to them hiding in, and eventually getting stuck in, her husband's clocks. The title can be translated literally as "The Spanish Hour", but the word "heure" also means "time" – "Spanish Time", with the connotation "How They Keep Time in Spain".

After her triumph with the album Offenbach Colorature (ALPHA437), Jodie Devos has chosen to follow in the footsteps of one of her compatriots, the Belgian coloratura soprano Marie Cabel (1827 -1885), who at the age of twenty-six scored a phenomenal success in Adolphe Adam’s opéra-comique Le Bijou perdu , which she premiered in Paris. She then took on a more dramatic role in Halévy’s Jaguarita l’Indienne , whose great Invocation with chorus (‘À moi ma cohorte!’) again hit the bullseye in a run of 124 performances over just a few months. Cabel enjoyed one hit after another, in Auber’s Manon Lescaut and La Part du diable , Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord and Le Pardon de Ploërmel , Victor Massé’s Galathée , and Le Songe d’une nuit d’été by Ambroise Thomas, who in 1866 gave her the biggest role of her career: Philine in Mignon , based on Goethe. In partnership with the musicologists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, who have resurrected and edited all these unjustly forgotten rarities, and Pierre Bleuse conducting the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir, Jodie Devos pays tribute to this star of the nineteenth century, whose audacity and sense of mischief she undoubtedly shares!