Les Hurlements D’leo il en Faudra Des Soleils

Glazunov’s ballet Les Ruses d’amour (also known as The Trial of Damis), is a charming choreographic realization of the French rococo, with a strong element of pastiche. Although the music is thoroughly Russian in its orchestral colouring and language, Glazunov makes imaginative use of earlier French dance melodies, and the score was praised by his former teacher Rimsky-Korsakov for its ‘unusual mastery of writing and extremely pictorial beauty’. The scenario concerns a duchess’s daughter, Isabella, who tests the Marquis Damis’s love by disguising herself as a maid servant.

Berlioz's Les nuits d'été has received some outstanding recordings over the years, prime among them those by Regine Crespin and Victoria de los Angeles. Here's a new one by Véronique Gens that belongs in their rarefied category. That should come as no surprise to admirers of her terrific Handel and French song discs. She sings with a light but expressive soprano that's fetching in itself and flexible enough to darken tones and lend emotional weight to the texts where called for. Her diction is impeccable, and the orchestral support is first-rate. The remainder of the disc is as good. The long dramatic scene, La mort de Cléopatre, is stunningly sung and played, Gens projecting the plight of the dejected queen with great intensity and vocal beauty. The three orchestral songs sparkle in Gens's renditions. The final one, "Zaïde," with its castanets and vivacious singing, will force you to keep hitting the repeat button. An unqualified recommendation!

The full title of Étron Fou Leloublan's second album is Les Trois Fous Perdégagnent (Au Pays Des…), which could translate to "The Three Fools Lose'n'win (In the Land Of…)" - granted, it doesn't make more sense in English than in French. On this opus from 1978, Francis Grand picks up the saxophone where Chris Chanet (aka Eulalie Ruynat) had left it. Despite his inventive growls and screams, he simply cannot tame the devastating rhythm section (and madcap creativity) of Ferdinand Richard and Guigou Chenevier. This album is a studio construction, filled with overdubs and intro/outro collages. The group has gained better knowledge of the possibilities offered by a recording studio, but still operates on a shoestring budget…

The Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and its Artistic and Music Director Kazuki Yamada, interprets the now ‘traditional’ recorded pairing of two sumptuous, escapist French song cycles: Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été and Ravel’s Shéhérazade. Complementing them both musically and thematically is a third, less frequently heard cycle by another great French composer, Camille Saint-Saëns: his Mélodies Persanes (Persian Songs). “From the first note to the last, Lemieux’s interpretation of the Berlioz was exemplary …” wrote Bachtrack when she performed Les Nuits d’été in Paris. “From the depths of her lower register to her shimmering high notes, she traced a supple trajectory through the work, phrasing with amplitude and missing no opportunity for word-painting.”

Alessandro Scarlatti's oratorio Il Martirio di Santa Teodosia is an exciting drama of life, love and death, set in the fourth-century Roman Empire. St. Theodosia of Tyre died at the age of eighteen, in the year 308. Preferring to devote her life to God, Teodosia rejects the love of Arsenio, the son of the Roman governor, and welcomes death. The dramatic strength and vocal beauty of this work flourishes in the hands Emmanuelle de Negri, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Anthea Pichanick, Renato Dolcini and the orchestra Les Accents led by Thibault Noally.