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Marie-Nicole Lemieux – Berlioz: Les nuits d’été, Op. 7, H 81b – Ravel: Shéhérazade, M. 41 – Saint-Saëns: Mélodies persanes, Op. 26 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:10:54 minutes | 659 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
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). “From the first note to the last, Lemieux’s interpretation of the Berlioz was exemplary …” wrote Bachtrack when she performed Les Nuits d’été in Paris. “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.”
Palazzetto Bru Zane’s new edition of the cycle Saint-Saëns: Mélodies Persanes presented here, is a premiere recording, it gathers these orchestrations of the songs but restores the original piano-vocal order, repurposing two brief interludes from Nuit Persane to serve as an orchestral introduction and transition.
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Marie-Nicole Lemieux – Rossini: Si, Si, Si, Si! Opera Arias & Duets (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:36 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics
“Rossini has been a revelation for me,” says Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux. The first fruit of her exclusive Erato contract is this live recording from Montpellier of arias and duets from Tancredi, Semiramide, L’italiana in Algeri and other serious and comic operas by the composer. She is joined by soprano Patrizia Ciofi and conductor Enrique Mazzola, also her partners for a 2014 staging of Tancredi in Paris, which prompted La Croix to praise her as “a generous artist with a voice that is both ample and easily produced across its entire tessitura … from the depths to top notes that flash like a cavalier’s sabre.”
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Marie-Nicole Lemieux – MER(S) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:22 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
MER(S) brings together three sumptuous late-19th century works for female voice and orchestra: Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and, in a world premiere recording, an ‘ode-symphonie’ by Victorin Joncières entitled La mer. Following her triumphant performance as Cassandre in Berlioz’s Les Troyens, Marie-Nicole Lemieux embarks on this musical sea voyage in the company of the Orchestre et choeurs nationaux Bordeaux Aquitaine under their music director Paul Daniel.
Read more![John Nelson, Joyce DiDonato, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Michael Spyres, Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg - Berlioz: Les Troyens (Live) (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/03/27/0190295759865_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
John Nelson, Joyce DiDonato, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Michael Spyres, Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg – Berlioz: Les Troyens (Live) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:54:51 minutes | 3,98 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics
We will gladly forgive the occasional “weakness” in sound technology in this recording of Troyens by Berlioz (recorded live in concert in April 2017). In light of the first-rate quality of the music and vocals that appear on the disc (a majority of which are French voices, with Stéphane Degout at their head) this immense work is from the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra and the three choirs which have been brought together – because the work demands immense swelling choirs – which are the choir of the Opéra national du Rhin, the Opéra National de Bade, and the Strasbourg Philharmonic’s own choir. This recording rests, of course, on the complete original edition, which gives the listener a chance to hear Les Troyens as the work was performed in 1863, at the Théâtre-Lyrique, in which some intense chopping saw Acts I and II condensed into one part and Acts III to V into another, producing two distinct operas (La Prise de Troieand Les Troyens à Carthage). We also get a taste, naturally, of Berlioz’s immensely rich orchestral innovations: with every new work, he would invent some exciting new prototype from scratch, never content to rest on his laurels. The listener should note the presence of six saxhorns, recently invented by Adolphe Sax (of whom Berlioz was an indefatigable champion, even if he didn’t often use his instruments in his scores, no doubt because of the poor quality of the early instrumentalists who learned – however well or badly – Sax’s instruments); bass clarinet, and an army of percussion pieces including several instruments which must have been rare in those days: crotales, goblet drums, tom-toms, thunder sheets… clearly, this is a milestone in the Berlioz discography.
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