Natalie Dessay - CD

Le Concert d’Astrée, under its founder and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, celebrates its 10th anniversary in style with a charity concert in Paris featuring 23 of the world’s most distinguished singers of baroque repertoire.

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Le Concert d’Astrée, under its founder and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, will give a concert entitled ‘Fête Baroque’ at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 19th December 2011. Joining Haïm and the orchestra are no less than 23 of the world’s most distinguished singers of baroque repertoire. Among the sources of the evening’s arias and ensembles are Giulio Cesare, Alcina, Rinaldo, Tamerlano, Come Ye Sons of Art, Thésée, Dardanus, Hippolyte et Aricie, and Les Indes galantes. The recording of this spectacular concert will join 15 discs that Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée already have in the Virgin Classics catalogue.

The concert also benefits a good cause as will this CD. Under the patronage of Madame Simone Veil, the former President of the European Parliament, the proceeds of the concert will go to the Révolution Cancer 2010-2013 programme of the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, south of Paris. The institute, with a staff of 2,600, is the leading oncology centre in Europe.

Two leading French performers – soprano Natalie Dessay and pianist Philippe Cassard – come together in vocal works from the early career of Claude Debussy, whose 150th anniversary falls in 2012. Their recital includes four unpublished songs reflecting the young composer’s love for the soprano wife of one of his patrons. In Cassard’s words, Dessay informs these works with “her charisma as an actress, her energy, her temperament and her virtuosity, with its joyous sense of fun”.

Claude Debussy, whose 150th anniversary falls in 2012, signed his scores ‘musicien français’ in the final years of his life. Two leading French musicians of today collaborate on this disc of the composer’s songs – including a number of rarities – and his cantata, La damoiselle élue, based on the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Philippe Cassard – whose impeccable Debussy credentials include performances of the composer’s complete piano works – wrote to Natalie Dessay after he had been deeply impressed by her interpretation of Mélisande, which can be seen on a Virgin Classics DVD of Pelléas et Mélisande (catalogue No 6961379). He suggested she would be perfect for a series of songs Debussy had composed around the age of 20.

As Cassard recounts: “At the time, Debussy was very much in love with Marie Vasnier, an older woman married to a man who helped Debussy at the beginning of his career. She was a light soprano and he composed some 40 songs for her, to poems by Bourget, Banville, Bouchor and Verlaine. They all reflect his feelings for Madame Vasnier.

“In 2010 I was shown a collection of Debussy manuscripts. Among them were four songs I had never heard of – and which the Debussy expert Denis Herlin confirmed were not officially documented. One of them, ‘Les Elfes’, to a poem by Leconte de Lisle, is, at 174 bars, the longest song Debussy ever wrote, and contains high vocalises, chord sequences taken from Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and melodic motifs showing the influence of Massenet and Delibes. Another, ‘Le matelot qui tombe à l'eau’, to a poem by Bouchor, is the shortest of all his songs, a dreamy little bubble of wit.”

Writing to Natalie Dessay after he had seen her Mélisande in Vienna, Cassard explained that “she would be the only person able to inhabit and embody these early Debussy songs … that her charisma as an actress, her energy, her temperament and her virtuosity, with its joyous sense of fun, would enable her to offer an interpretation that was different and really personal … something far away from a performing tradition that portrays preciosity, restrained intimacy and pseudo-Impressionism, which to me seems out of place in these works: they might be poetic, but they are also full of passion.”

Dessay had in fact sung many of Debussy’s songs in the past, and she was delighted to return to them as she and Cassard made a selection from repertoire which, as the pianist says, “shows Debussy trying out all sorts of genres, testing his ammunition and his discoveries.”

Describing the partnership with Dessay, Cassard says: “I’ve worked with many singers and this collaboration with Natalie Dessay gave me the privilege and joy of meeting an inspired, but humble artist with a perpetually questing spirit, always ready to question the text and the score. Her straightforwardness and integrity are rare in a professional world so obsessed with appearances. I am eternally grateful to her.”

The Mariinsky label’s opera recordings have garnered acclaim and awards from around the world, most recently for Valery Gergiev’s recording of Parsifal released in 2010. For the label’s fifth opera, Gergiev conducts Donizetti’s masterpiece with a magnificent cast led by Natalie Dessay.

Natalie Dessay is one of the world’s most sought-after sopranos and an admired interpreter of lyric heroines. She is particularly renowned for her interpretation of the role of Lucia, which she has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House and the Mariinsky Theatre. Future engagements include Verdi’s La Traviata with the LSO at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July and at the Vienna State Opera in October.

Piotr Beczala is rapidly establishing a reputation as one of today’s leading lyric tenors. He has recently sung Edgardo at the Met and on tour in Japan, and this summer will perform at the Bavarian State Opera and Salzburg Festival.

Valery Gergiev recently won the Disc of the Year Award from BBC Music Magazine for his LSO Live recording of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet. In July, Gergiev will conduct the Mariinsky Ballet at New York Metropolitan Opera and in August he conducts at the Edinburgh Festival and BBC Proms with the Mariinsky Orchestra before opening the LSO’s 2011-12 concert season.

In October he embarks on a major tour of the USA and Canada with the Mariinsky Orchestra, including residencies at Carnegie Hall and Berkeley. Forthcoming releases include the final instalment in his Mahler cycle on LSO Live featuring Symphony No 9 and the Mariinsky label’s first DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs.

Natalie Dessay appears courtesy of Virgin Classics.

Recording Country: France

Recording Location: 15-22 January 2003. Eglise Notre Dame du Liban, Paris.

Mix Date: 22 Jan 2003

Executive Producer: Alain Lanceron

Producer & Editor: Daniel Zalay

Balance Engineer: Jean Chatauret (Musica Numeris)

Recording Country: France

Recording Location: 2-5 December 1997, Opera de Lyon

Mix Date: 5 Dec 1997

Executive Producer: Alain Lanceron

Producer: Daniel Zalay

Engineer: Raymond Buttin

Editor: Yves Baudry

At the Paris Opéra in early 2011, Natalie Dessay takes on a new starring role: Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, now the most popular of all the composer’s stage works. The many facets of the Egyptian queen – captured by Shakespeare in the phrase “infinite variety” – are depicted in a sequence of contrasting arias, both lyrical and brilliant, making the character a superb showcase for the French soprano’s talents as a singing actress.

Conducting the impressive cast and the period-instrument orchestra Le Concert d'Astrée at the Opéra – and on this new recording of excerpts from Giulio Cesare – is Emmanuelle Haïm, who first collaborated with Dessay in the late 1990s; both artists were involved in a Paris production of Handel’s Alcina, Haïm as répétiteur (for William Christie) and Dessay in the sparkling role of Morgana. Since then, the two have developed a close working relationship which has produced a number of Virgin Classics recordings, including several works by Handel: cantatas (in a collection called Delirio), the Dixit Dominus and the oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno, a recording which left the French magazine Diapason “looking forward to Emmanuelle Haïm’s next exciting Handelian adventure”.

Dessay describes Haïm as the metteur en scène – the stage director – for her voice, while Haïm describes Dessay’s voice as “an exceptional instrument which can take on a thousand forms ... Its virtuosity and flexibility make you forget all the difficulties presented by the music.” Haïm goes on to say that: “Handel is the composer for the voice. He demands special qualities that Natalie possesses: an ability to create colours, to embody words in song and to let the imagination speak.”

Reviewing Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno, Le Monde de la Musique observed that “the virtuosity and rich palette of Le Concert d’Astrée enable Emanuelle Haïm to match the colours and tempo to the emotion expressed”, while the New York Times wrote that: “Ms. Haïm directs the superb Baroque orchestra Le Concert d'Astrée in a fleet, immaculate performance that dances among airy, profound and sensuous moods. The excellent quartet of singers is led by the radiant, bright voice of the soprano Natalie Dessay, whose rapturous Bellezza traverses innocence, defiance and penitence by way of some impressively agile coloratura. ’Tu del ciel ministro eletto', her spare, haunting final aria with plaintive violin accompaniment, is glorious.” In Britain, the The Sunday Times found that “Natalie Dessay dazzles in Beauty’s arias – she is gorgeous in the sublime penitential concluding number … With Haïm conducting with élan, this is the best available version of this glorious score.”

Reissue in slimmer packaging including a tracked synopsis in 3 languages, now that the original versions are no longer available. Libretto to be found on the web.

Strauss, says Natalie Dessay, is the key to her career, and this recital of Lieder, arias and scenes features two contrasting characters central to her stage repertoire: the innocent young Sophie from Der Rosenkavalier and the coquettish Zerbinetta, a role Natalie has made her own in Paris and at the Met, and whose dizzyingly stratospheric set piece opens this programme. Available for the first time in jewel case format.