Chœur du Concert Spirituel – Reynaldo Hahn: L’île du rêve (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Chœur du Concert Spirituel – Reynaldo Hahn: L’île du rêve (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:00:34 minutes | 627 MB | Genre:
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bru Zane

To have written that, you must be a poet, Massenet told Reynaldo Hahn when he read through the score of L’Île du rêve. Composed when the young man was not yet eighteen years old, this ‘curtain-raiser’ already had the qualities of the great works of the period. It reveals the coloristic talents of Bizet, the passionate outbursts of Massenet and even the prosodic originality of the young Debussy.

The plot recounts a French naval officer’s love affair with a young Polynesian girl he has to abandon. This subject – also treated musically by Puccini (Madama Butterfly) and Delibes (Lakmé – is approached in an almost Symbolist style: the Romanticism of the music contrasts with a contemplative, introspective treatment of the narration. This is where the youthful Hahn particularly shines: in the very first bars (the hymn to Bora-Bora), in the various love scenes for Loti and Mahenu (notably the duet “Restons encore les paupieres mi-closes”) and even in the neo-Handelian prelude to Act Two. – Bru Zane

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Orchestre de l’opéra de Rouen Normandie, Chœur du Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet – Saint-Saëns: Phryné (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Orchestre de l'opéra de Rouen Normandie, Chœur du Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet - Saint-Saëns: Phryné (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Orchestre de l’opéra de Rouen Normandie, Chœur du Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet – Saint-Saëns: Phryné (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:28 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Bru Zane

To mark the centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns, the Palazzetto Bru Zane offers a chance to discover one of his most performed and admired operas in his lifetime, presented here in a rare version. Completed in 1893 and premiered the same year at the Opéra-Comique, the piece amusingly recounts the love affair between Nicias and Phryné, who dupes the old archon Dicephilus in order to avenge his cruelty. Its witty melodies and delightful orchestration made the opera an immediate success in Paris and then throughout France. It was enriched with recitatives composed by André Messager in 1896 to promote its career in theatres abroad.
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