Italiens

Digne héritière de la Renaissance ou arène médiatique grotesque des frasques de Berlusconi ? On ne sait plus trop où va l’Italie. Est-elle vraiment à la dérive ? Et si oui, peut-elle se relancer ? Surtout, comment comprendre les Italiens ? Avec l’ironie du journaliste, Alberto Toscano passe en revue les clichés véhiculés par son pays de naissance : pasta, Vespa, Cinecittà…

Documenting more than a hundred years of Italian operatic music in France, Benjamin Bernheim’s new album Boulevard des Italiens. Music stretching from Spontini’s La Vestale to Mascagni’s Amica – all sung in French – receives gold-star treatment from Bernheim, a tenor ideally placed to sing this repertoire in his native language. As he explains, “The aim was really to show the history of the French language in opera houses in Paris by way of these Italian composers who brought their pieces there. With the Opéra Garnier at one end, and the Opéra-Comique at the other, the Boulevard des Italiens is where it all happened.”

Nowadays, little introduction on record is needed for the dramatic output of Jean-Baptiste Lully: his style has become unquestionably associated with French music of the 17th century. But long before he became the all-conquering composer of tragédies en musique at the court of Louis XIV, Giovanni Battista Lulli, during his early years in Paris and encouraged by the also Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, helped to spread the music from his native country into the French court. Lully’s own initial compositions - forging his unmistakable style - focused on music for ballets de cour and for these his instrumental entrées were combined with vocal sections in Italian such as arias and Le Florentin’s early treatment of recitative. Not just transalpine composers were welcomed in Paris but singers too.