Berlioz: Les Nuits d'Été, Ravel: Shéhérazade, Saint-Saëns: Mélodies Persanes

1. Berlioz: les Nuits d’été op.7, I. Villanelle
2. Berlioz: les Nuits d’été op.7, II. Le Spectre de la rose
3. Berlioz: les Nuits d’été op.7, III. Sur les lagunes
4. Berlioz: les Nuits d’été op.7, IV. Absence
5. Berlioz: les Nuits d’été op.7, V. Au cimetière
6. Berlioz: les Nuits d’été op.7, VI. L'Île inconnue
7. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, Prélude
8. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, I. La brise
9. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, II. La splendeur vide
10. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, III. La solitaire
11. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, IV. Sabre en main
12. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, Interlude
13. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, V. Au cimetière
14. Saint Saëns: Mélodies Persanes op.26, VI. Tournoiement
15. Ravel: Shéhérazade M.41, I. Asie
16. Ravel: Shéhérazade M.41, II. La Flûte Enchantée
17. Ravel: Shéhérazade M.41, III. L’indifférent

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). Dating from 1870 – chronologically central between the Berlioz (1841) and the Ravel (1904) – they are settings of poems by Armand Renaud, one of the so-called Parnassian poets who took inspiration from Théophile Gautier, Berlioz’s literary source for Les Nuits d’été.

When Marie-Nicole Lemieux performed Les Nuits d’été in Paris in 2019, Bachtrack wrote: “From the first note to the last, Lemieux’s interpretation of the Berlioz was exemplary … Rarely have the texts seemed so natural and so well-articulated. As she moved from characterisation to narration, Lemieux’s sense for balance was worthy of a great exponent of song. 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. Filling the crescendos of ‘Le spectre de la rose’ with expression and assuming a blanched voice in ‘Au cimetière’, she took the listener from the breath of spring to the chilly marble of the tomb.”

More recently, ForumOpéra has been unreserved in its praise of Lemieux’s command of French vocal music: “Her voice, magnificently projected … is as captivating as ever in its velvety warmth. Her diction is exquisitely precise in its capacity for emphasising certain words to highlight key points in the text,” and “What was striking … was the incredible rang of colours in her voice … Where does she find such minutely calibrated nuance? She succeeds in saying everything … with a simple inflection of the voice, with the way a vowel fades or blooms anew.”