Les Ducs Préfèrent Les Blondes

Lui: Les filles préfèrent les salauds. Ce n'est pas nouveau. Il suffit de regarder tous les films romantiques pour le constater. Elles craquent continuellement pour le bad boy à la barbe de trois jours, mystérieux, sexy, inatteignable. Et le bon gars, là-dedans? Relégué au rôle de meilleur ami, bien entendu. Vous aurez compris que c'est moi, le bon gars, celui qui est « tellement fin, mais… ». Je viens d'ailleurs de rencontrer une fille qui confirme ma théorie. Elle semble toujours attirée par des trous de cul.Alors, je lui lance un défi. …

En 1954, M. Monroe a 28 ans et a déjà tourné une vingtaine de films et ses premiers succès. C. Feldman, son agent, contacte B. Hecht pour aider l'actrice à écrire ses mémoires. Pour des raisons personnelles, elle met fin à leurs séances de travail et confie ce texte inachevé à son ami le photographe M. Greene, qui le révèlera au public 20 ans plus tard, en 1974. …

Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques make a foray into the Romantic repertoire with this tribute to Pauline Viardot, who was not only the most influential singer of the nineteenth century, but also a pedagogue and composer, whose gifts, personality and incomparable aura made her one of the leading figures of French Romanticism. Together the mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti and Christophe Rousset retrace Pauline Viardot’s versatile career and, taking up her great roles, present a musical portrait of a unique performer, who was unanimously acclaimed by the audiences of her time.

After two recordings devoted to the harpsichord pieces of Savoyard composer Pancrace Royer, Christophe Rousset, this time conducting, turns to the composer's orchestral suites. Taken from Royer's operatic works and (with the exception of a live version of Pyrrhus) never previously recorded, these choreographic pieces reveal a new facet of the composer. The brilliance and virtuosity of his harpsichord compositions are well known; here we discover his gift for refinement and lyricism. These dances show Royer's singular sense of harmony and fine use of orchestral contrasts, as well as an almost whimsical rhetoric of the unexpected. Some of his best-known pieces, including the famous "March of the Scythians" from Zaïde, are to be heard here in their orchestral form. This recording will undoubtedly further the rediscovery of this iconoclastic composer, whose very personal style and innate sense of drama are given striking depth and relief here under the baton of Christophe Rousset.

Continuing their exploration of Ravel’s output, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles offer us two works linked by his love of Spain. Alongside the famous Bolero, which regains its original flavour here on period instruments, is Ravel’s first opera, which flirted with libertinism: though its outstanding cast consists entirely of native French-speakers, this caustic ‘Hour’ remains quintessentially Spanish!

After Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Les Talens Lyriques concludes the group’s cycle of Antonio Salieri’s French operas with the world premiere recording of Tarare. Often unfairly overshadowed by his brilliant contemporary Mozart, Salieri here composed a genuine masterpiece on the only libretto ever written by Beaumarchais.
Salieri has a taste for exoticism and, like Mozart in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, he transports us into a fantasy Orient seen through the eyes of the pre-revolutionary philosophy of the Enlightenment.

Ligeti’s interest in sonorities and instrumental timbres is well known. François-Xavier Roth and the musicians of Les Siècles, themselves true alchemists of sounds and colours, recorded shimmering interpretations of these three works in 2016, displaying unprecedented clarity and naturalness, and also tremendous humour. They have been superbly remastered for this reissue.