Saint dx la Même

Saint Just was a seventies Italian progressive group but not really reminiscent of the typical Italian sound. Influences from folk, psychedelic and classical can be heard in their music. The most remarkable instrument in their music is the vocals of Jane Sorrenti that float above the music. Her vocal delivery is definitely an acquired taste. The group released only two albums and the line-up is very different in these two albums. In the 1st album there were only three official members of which the saxophonist Robert Fix was not included in the 2nd album. For their 2nd album the remaining members Jane Sorrenti and Antonio Verde (classical guitar, bass) added electric guitarists Tito Rinesi and Andrea Faccenda as well as a drummer Fulvio Maras.

That globetrotting composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote La Princesse jaune in 1872, exemplifying the current craze for all things Japanese. Kornélis, played by the tenor Mathias Vidal, dreams only of the Land of the Rising Sun. Under the influence of a hallucinogenic potion, he becomes infatuated with Ming, a fantasy princess. His cousin Léna – the soprano Judith van Wanroij – despairs of this passion and does not dare to confess her own feelings to Kornélis, who eventually comes to his senses. The running time of this opera enables us to offer a coupling in the shape of a previously unrecorded version of Saint-Saëns’s six Mélodies persanes, thus extending the guiding thread of a yearning for exotic horizons in another direction. Leo Hussain conducts the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in both works.