o Lion

The subtitle of this album is "New Works for Remembrance," and its four selections by British composers are united by their use of texts that deal, either explicitly or implicitly, with the personal ravages of war. They were performed by the Portsmouth Grammar School Chamber Choir at the school's annual Remembrance Day concerts. Cecilia McDowall's Ave Maris Stella would be lovely except that it is difficult to take seriously because its opening and closing sections are a brazenly transparent rip-off of Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium. Lynne Plowman's Cries Like Silence, for four soloists, choir, orchestra ………

Stephen Eddins @ Allmusic.com

André Grétry's Richard Coeur de Lion, or Richard the Lionhearted, lay neglected until 2019 when a production by the Opéra Royal de Versailles was mounted. This album is taken from that performance, and it's very well recorded indeed. The opera was quite well known in its time and was even performed in the young U.S. (in Boston, in 1796), and it's a great find, a real crowd-pleaser as much today as at the end of the 18th century. The story is based on a probably imaginary tale of an episode during Richard's return from the Crusades, when he was imprisoned in Linz, Austria. A trouvère singer named Blondel who serves the king realizes his predicament, sneaks into the prison disguised as a blind fiddler, and touches off an action-packed sequence of events with a romance involving the prison governor, a grand party, and a visiting Flemish countess whose troops rescue Richard in the end.