de L'aviation 2016

Jordi Savall - Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (2016) {Alia Vox AVSA9919}
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© 2016 Alia Vox | AVSA9919
Classical / Medieval / Sacred

Recorded live in Barcelona (Church Santa Maria del Pi) November 25th, 2013. Jordi Savall had every historical, geographical and emotional reason to pay a well deserved tribute to one of the most famous manuscripts of ancient music. The 'Llibre Vermell de Montserrat' is a collection of devotional texts containing late medieval songs and dances. The 14th-century manuscript was compiled in and is still located at the monastery of Montserrat outside Barcelona in Catalonia (Spain). The title describes the red binding in which the collection was placed in the 19th century. The songs were written in Catalan, in Occitan and in Latin for the pilgrims to have something appropriately «chaste and pious» to sing and dance. In this beautiful live recording made at the Santa Maria del Pi church in Barcelona, the colorful succession of songs and dances offers us a pleasant trip to the heart of the medieval music.

French Baroque music has never achieved the general familiarity of its German and Italian cousins, but that's not for any lack of trying on the part of conductor Sébastien Daucé and his Ensemble Correspondances. What you get here is a Pastorale de Noël a fairly short but grand Christmas narrative plus one set of "Antiennes de O," or O Anthems, so called because each one begins with the word "O."

In 1974, British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan in turn decided to focus on the two protagonists for an ambitious ballet that could translate the feelings and emotions of two souls abused by the accidents of life and their own personal weaknesses. In short, how a young girl on her way to a convent manages to elope with the young student with whom she has just fallen in love, only to leave him to escape destitution and finally allow herself to be persuaded by her brother Lescaut to yield to the advances of wealthy “protectors”. Accused of prostitution and deported to Louisiana, Manon is rescued by Des Grieux. Driven to murder by Manon’s jailer, he escapes with her into the marshes where the young girl ultimately succumbs. Although sincere, the love that Manon and Des Grieux share for each other cannot stand up to the vagaries of existence. As a result, neither is able to escape moral or social decline. Rather than reuse the score of Massenet’s opera, MacMillan entrusted Leighton Lucas with the task of arranging a series of extracts taken from a selection of the French composer’s operatic, symphonic and vocal scores… The end result was a huge success from its debut performance in London in 1974 onwards.

In its day La scuola de’ gelosi (1778) was one of the best-known comic operas by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), remaining a box-office hit for decades. All the more astonishing is the fact that it could sink into obscurity. Even Goethe was excited by this masterpiece: “The opera is the audience’s favourite, and the audience is right. It contains an astonishing richness and variety, and the subject is treated with the most exquisite taste. I was moved by every aria.” In the wake of its world premiere in Venice in 1778, La scuola de’ gelosi was performed in opera houses all over Europe, from Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Paris to cities as far away as London and St Petersburg, before it passed into near-oblivion.