Label: WARNER MUSIC Catalog: 5099921657429 Format: CD
Véronique Gens, Christophe Rousset
I. Gluck: Alceste - Grands dieux soutenez mon courage...Ah! Divinités implacables
II. Sacchini: Dardanus - Air d'Iphise: Il me fuit....Rien ne peut émouvoir
III. Sacchini: Dardanus - Air d'Iphise: Cesse cruel amour de régner sur mon âme
IV. Piccini: Didon - Air de Didon: Non, ce n'est plus pour moi
V. Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice: Ballet des ombres heureuses
VI. Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice: Air de Furies
VII. Sacchini: Oedipe à Colone - Air d'Antigone: Dieux, ce n'est pas pour moi que ma voix vous implore
VIII. Grétry: Andromaque - Air d'Hermione: C'est le seul espoir qui me reste....Si fidèle au noeud qui l'engage
IX. Rameau: Les Paladins - Entrée très gaye de Troubadours
X. Rameau: Les Paladins - Air d'Argie: Triste séjour
XI. Ramean: Les Paladins - Sarabande
XII. Sacchini: Renaud - Air d'Armide: Hélas vous le dirais-je....Ah! Que dis-tu?
XIII. Rameau: Les Paladins - Menuets I & II
XIV. Cherubini: Médée - Air de Néris: Ah! Nos Peines seront communes
XV. Arriaga: Herminie - Récit & Air d'Herminie: Mais sur cette arène guerrière....Il n'est plus....Dieux cruels!
XVI. Berlioz: Les Troyens - Récitatif & Air de Cassandre: Les Grecs ont disparu - Malheureux Roi
Gramophone Editor's Choice - October 2009
Soprano Véronique Gens, one of the leading French singers of today, presents an imaginatively programmed sequel to her award-winning 2006 recital of tragic operatic heroines. This second album of Tragédiennes features arias and ballet music from the 18th and 19th centuries, from the Baroque (Rameau) to the Romantic (Berlioz) by way of such important transitional figures as Gluck – a composer whose heroine figure prominently in Gens’ schedule in 2010, with Alceste in Aix-en-Provence, Iphigénie en Aulide in Brussels and Iphigénie en Tauride in Vienna – Cherubini, and lesser-known figures such as Piccini, Sacchini and Arriaga, the ‘Spanish Mozart’, who died at the age of just 19. Reviewing the first Tragédiennes, Opera magazine described Gens as “a soprano moulded by the best performance traditions of the French Baroque rediscovery of recent decades, but also one capable — as she has proved live and on record — of compassing Mozart and Berlioz in her repertory. Gens’s liquid-toned soprano … [with its] evenness of vocal production and command of line and tone ... is the programme’s binding and focal point, and always balm to the ears.” Opera went on to say that “[the programme] shows off Gens’s sophisticated mastery of recitative declamation and aria-shaping and her considerable command of the various necessary vocal styles and manners, while at the same time blending historical nous, musical novelty, vocal attraction and dramatic liveliness in a manner rarely encountered today. The project was obviously carefully conceived and prepared; hard indeed to imagine it without Rousset and his splendid orchestra, who interleave the vocal items with some well-chosen instrumental items from the works in question … it’s a CD worth acquiring by anyone with the smallest interest in the singer, the period and the genres on display.” As Gramophone said of the first album: “Gens's great gift is in differentiating between the various tragic heroines and bringing total dramatic commitment to each. There's anger spat out at white heat but there's also quiet, brooding hysteria – all characterised to perfection. And in Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques she has partners on a truly exalted plane of imagination, musicality and sheer theatrical flair.”