Véronique Gens ~ Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été · La mort de Cléopatre

Hector Berlioz (Artist), Louis Langrée (Artist), Véronique Gens (Artist), Orchestre de l'Opéra National de Lyon (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 8, 2002)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: EMI Classics
• ASIN: B00005A9ND
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,841 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Berlioz's Les nuits d'été has received some outstanding recordings over the years, prime among them those by Regine Crespin and Victoria de los Angeles. Here's a new one by Véronique Gens that belongs in their rarefied category. That should come as no surprise to admirers of her terrific Handel and French song discs. She sings with a light but expressive soprano that's fetching in itself and flexible enough to darken tones and lend emotional weight to the texts where called for. Her diction is impeccable, and the orchestral support is first-rate. The remainder of the disc is as good. The long dramatic scene, La mort de Cléopatre, is stunningly sung and played, Gens projecting the plight of the dejected queen with great intensity and vocal beauty. The three orchestral songs sparkle in Gens's renditions. The final one, "Zaïde," with its castanets and vivacious singing, will force you to keep hitting the repeat button. An unqualified recommendation! - Dan Davis

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gens gems, December 11, 2003

By 

Bob Zeidler (Charlton, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Véronique Gens ~ Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été · La mort de Cléopatre (Audio CD)

Two hundred years ago today, Louis-Hector Berlioz was born. This is a day for me to comment on a few of my favorite performances of his works, some of them "favorites by acclamation" and others simply those in which I find special merit, enough so that they are frequently in my CD players.

Some might think that, at just a hair over 61 minutes, this CD is small measure. Not so! These are some of Hector Berlioz's most important non-operatic vocal writings.

And they are gems as sung here by Véronique Gens. While normally thought of as a Baroque specialist (and I have a recording of Rameau's "Dardanus" which testifies to her expertise in that repertoire), Gens is more than "reasonably close to perfection" in these Berlioz works.

The two main works on this CD - Les nuits d'été and La mort de Cléopatre - are hardly strangers to the vocal repertoire. Neither has lacked recordings that many Berlioz lovers treasure. For Les nuits d'été alone, I number at least three - by Regine Crespin, Janet Baker and Jan DeGaetani - among such "treasures."

Gens, a lyric soprano, brings a sense of lightness and air to this song cycle that is, while different than, say, Baker's or DeGaetani's approach, nonetheless effective in its own right. Her relative lightness works very well in "Vilanelle," but she has more than enough vocal range and "adaptability" so that the more poignant songs in the cycle, such as "Le Spectre de la rose," are suitably captured as well: her expressive range, and her perfect knowledge of the language, are just fine for singing a song cycle for which Berlioz's directions as to voice-casting were not exactly cast in stone.

La mort de Cléopatre is an early Berlioz work, one of four such cantatas that he had submitted for the Prix de Rome competition. Put simply, he was too original for the competition committee to deal with him, and this cantata (the third of the four) was the one for which he simply threw his arms up in the air and wrote what he felt like. (Only on the fourth try, with a by-now almost forgotten cantata named Sardanapale, did he "play by the rules" and win.)

This cantata is every bit as revolutionary - and as bold - as Berlioz' most famous work, Symphonie fantastique, which shares approximate date of creation with it. It is full of original touches both harmonic and rhythmic (touches, in fact, that would contribute to labeling him as "wayward," "undisciplined" and even "untrained"). Gens readily shifts gears here, demonstrating a dramatic and tragic side not present in Les nuits d'été. The closing pages - as Cléopatre lays dying from the asp's bite - are rendered with chilling and moving effectiveness.

The remaining three songs, originally for voice and piano, are skillfully orchestrated by this most innovative orchestrator (who literally "wrote the book" on the subject). Particularly appealing is "Zaïde": with its castanets and its Spanish flair, it looks forward to Bizet and the Carmen that was yet to come, decades later.

There is a minor mislabeling error on my copy of this recording. "Zaïde," actually the final (10th) track (and properly identified in the booklet), is listed as track 8 on the package and on the disc as well. But no one will have any difficulty identifying "Zaïde" from the brief description above.

Gens shows a real affinity for this music, despite her French Baroque repertoire background. I'm not sure that any of the singers earlier mentioned, with the obvious exception of Regine Crespin, could have done as fine a job overall. Truly "Gens gems." And the orchestral support, with Louis Langrée leading the Lyon Opera Orchestra, is superb, as are the recorded sonics. Finally, the package is topped off with excellent and detailed booklet notes.

Bon anniversaire, M. Berlioz!

Bob Zeidler

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another triumph for Gens, March 21, 2002

By 

L. Gallagher "ljgdonegal" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Véronique Gens ~ Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été · La mort de Cléopatre (Audio CD)

In the last decade a number of French sopranos rose to international prominence and Gens is right at the top of this estimable group. She just keeps getting better and better -- already known in the early '90's for her work in Baroque music, her more recent ventures in later repertoire have revealed a lyric voice with an astonishing color palette and dramatic instinct. Gens' performance of "La mort de Cleopatre," especially, has to be heard to be believed.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LYRIC OR DRAMATIC?, July 21, 2004

By 

DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Véronique Gens ~ Berlioz - Les Nuits d'été · La mort de Cléopatre (Audio CD)

The British musical public do not seem to have warmed greatly to Nuits d'Ete. When Jessye Norman, no less, sang it with the Halle a good few years ago the turnout was pitiful from a Manchester audience who will reliably fill the hall to hear their umptieth Messiah. Nevertheless there are a lot of versions of Nuits d'Ete around seemingly arousing considerable interest in America. As nobody over here seems to have much to say about about these heavenly songs, it may be worth putting in a word from das Land ohne Musik about this lovely disc.

Berlioz prepared a number of versions of N d'E to suit different types of voice. It seems to me that the choice of one version over another will likely depend on one's preference in that respect, and my own predisposition is to hear them done by a woman rather than a man (even though most of the poems speak in a man's persona), by a soprano rather than a mezzo, and by a lyric rather than an operatic soprano -- the kind of voice that would suit Schubert rather than Verdi. Veronique Gens fits this bill to perfection.

To me N d'E shows Berlioz the pure musician -- no brass bands, no organs, cannons or weapons of mass destruction. Their lyricism is among the most beautiful in the whole 19th century, and although a full orchestra is used the orchestration is intimate not epic, and to my ears its wonderful detail is heard to best effect when the singer is 'my' type of soprano. If you have a 'bigger' concept of the piece, there is an interesting version by Boulez, with the 6 songs divided between Yvonne Minton and Stuart Burrows, that might suit you. To me Minton's sound-production and diction are a bit suggestive of oratorio to be right for this of all composers, and the recording, though okay, is not as good as on this disc. Between the extremes are several other versions, nearly all by sopranos though there is apparently one by Souzay, and some helpful American reviews.

In Cleopatre I would not be so categorical. This is avowedly a dramatic piece and some of its admirers will likely want a more forceful delivery here and there. On the other hand most of the piece is quiet, and Gens sings with such finesse and sensitivity that I have no complaints. The other three numbers are simply superb from her, and from the Lyons opera orchestra under Langree, indeed the whole disc is superb in my opinion.

The liner notes are a mixture of some really interesting background information with some 'analytical' comment of a rather conventional kind. Whose understanding of what, I wonder, is advanced by being told that 'the rocking triple time of the first strophe gives way in the second to a burst of levity, shared between the voice and the accompaniment, but still on the same theme' and a good deal more on similar lines? The translation from the very French French is so adept and natural that I got to the end without realising that I had been reading a translation at all, although I wish Hugh Graham had not let himself away with 'a wonderful horseman' for 'un cavalier merveilleux' as if we were talking about Ronald Reagan or someone at the Badminton trials. A full text of the poems with English and German translations is provided, and the recorded quality seems to me beyond criticism.