Also available on Blu-ray

Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntagirov star as tragic lovers Manon and Des Grieux in this performance of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, a classic of the Royal Ballet repertory. Nicholas Gerogiadis’s period designs set the ballet in the contrasting worlds of Paris Luxury and Louisiana swampland, while the intense emotion of MacMillan’s choreography is complemented by a score drawn from Massenet’s music. The impassioned pas de deux from Manon and Des Grieux drive this tragic story, and make Manon one of MacMillan’s most powerful dramas. “Kenneth MacMillan’s retelling of Abbe Prevost’s cautionary tale of a young man brought low by an amoral young beauty has been a mainstay of the Royal Ballet repertoire since 1974. The current revival is vividly played and danced by some first-rate casts.” (The Financial Times)

Jules Massenet has long been associated primarily with opera, while his orchestral works have gone unappreciated. This collection of overtures, ballet music, and concert pieces, each with its own unique orchestral colour, showcases Massenet’s orchestral writing at its finest. The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is conducted by its Music and Artistic Director, Neeme Järvi.

From the opening diminished seventh chord of the concert work Ouverture de ‘Phèdre’ it is clear that we are in a world of high drama. Commissioned in 1874 for performance in Paris, it is based on Racine’s play of the same name.

Written in the same year, but in complete contrast, is the Scènes pittoresques, full of a grace and elegance that is often reminiscent of Tchaikovsky. The ‘Suite de ballet’ from Le Cid evokes yet another sound world, one of exotic colours and exuberant celebration, its seven movements featuring dance music from different regions of Spain.

Also featured on this album are a number of works involving a solo cello, performed here by Truls Mørk, one of the pre-eminent cellists of our time. He shines a light on Massenet’s little-known Fantaisie for cello and orchestra, a fine piece rarely heard on disc or in the concert hall.

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“True to form, Järvi has uncovered a collection of minor works by a well-known composer and injected enough sparkle into them to make for hugely enjoyable listening… Järvi is in his element, and his Geneva orchestra responds with spirit and style.” – Financial Times

Of the three more substantial items, the two most familiar are played by Neeme Jarvi and his Swiss orchestra with infectious panache and finesse.

– BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by �douard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann (who used the pseudonym Henri Gr�mont). It is loosely based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which was based both on fact and on Goethe's own early life. In this recording from the Opernhaus Zurich, Juan Diego Florez, Anna Stephany, Cornelius Meister, and Tatjana Gurbaca, along with the orchestra of the Opernhaus Zurich, bring a new and modern flair to this dramatic work.

Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann (who used the pseudonym Henri Grémont). It is loosely based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which was based both on fact and on Goethe's own early life. In this recording from the Opernhaus Zurich, Juan Diego Florez, Anna Stephany, Cornelius Meister, and Tatjana Gurbaca, along with the orchestra of the Opernhaus Zurich, bring a new and modern flair to this dramatic work.

Massenet: Werther

Jules Massenet's fairy-tale opera Cendrillon ('Cinderella') was an immediate success at it's premiere in 1899 at the Op�ra-Comique in Paris. Massenet, then at the height of his powers, creates a magical sound-world full of wit, enchantment and perfumed elegance to match librettist Henri Cain's coming-of-age adaptation of this classic fairy tale. The colorful fantasy world created by the acclaimed stage director Barbrara Mundel and set designer Olga Motta features the British-Swiss soprano, Kim-Lillian Strebel, in her critically acclaimed title role. Kim-Lillian Strebel has received critical acclaim following a number of high profile debuts. She has acquired an extensive repertoire to include several high-profile roles. She recently made her US concert debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

CLASSICS IN HEAVEN

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Also available on standard DVD

Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntagirov star as tragic lovers Manon and Des Grieux in this performance of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, a classic of the Royal Ballet repertory. Nicholas Gerogiadis’s period designs set the ballet in the contrasting worlds of Paris Luxury and Louisiana swampland, while the intense emotion of MacMillan’s choreography is complemented by a score drawn from Massenet’s music. The impassioned pas de deux from Manon and Des Grieux drive this tragic story, and make Manon one of MacMillan’s most powerful dramas. “Kenneth MacMillan’s retelling of Abbe Prevost’s cautionary tale of a young man brought low by an amoral young beauty has been a mainstay of the Royal Ballet repertoire since 1974. The current revival is vividly played and danced by some first-rate casts.” (The Financial Times)

Massenet's Werther is one of those masterpieces that were rejected or shunned at the time of their creation. Sketched in the 1880s, the score was turned down by the director of the Opera-Comique and had to make do with a premiere in German, far from Paris, before finally being heard in Paris in 1893. It gradually established itself as one of the composer's most personal works, in which he showed himself to be as fine a colourist as he was a master of the art of the 'motif de rappel'. In adapting Goethe's novel, Massenet and his librettists gave greater prominence to the character of Charlotte, thus placing the struggle between duty and passion at the centre of the narrative. The role of Werther, originally assigned to a tenor, was also sung by the baritone Mattia Battistini with the composer's approval. Provided the singer makes skilful use of voix mixte, this version gives the work a melancholy colouring ideal for portraying it's hero's suicidal temperament. Tassis Christoyannis follows this approach in exemplary fashion, opposite the reserved yet moving Charlotte of Veronique Gens. Both singers give the text the preponderant role allotted to it by French operatic tradition.

Capriccio Encore is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio’s back catalogue, fully re-mastered and competitively priced. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys’ Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day. This installment in the series features Sir Neville Marriner conducting his Academy of St. Martin In the Fields as they perform ballet suites written by French Romantic composer Jules Emile Frederic Massenet. Massenet was a skilled orchestrator, and willingly wrote ballet episodes for his numerous operas as well as one stand-along ballet. His style with its graceful movement was perfectly suited to classical French ballet.

The French violinist Hugues Borsarello draws this programme of miniatures from the repertory of his instrument and from the great operatic arias, transcribed for violin and orchestra: ‘My idea was to relate a French history of music over the course of three centuries, in the form of short pieces.’ Lully’s Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs rubs shoulders with arias by Bizet, Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, Satie’s Gymnopédie no.3 and Gounod’s Ave Maria. All these universally known pieces ‘are perfectly suited to the soul of the violin’, says Borsarello, who is joined by prestigious guests: cellist Gautier Capuçon for Vieuxtemps’s Duo Brillant, guitarist Thomas Dutronc for Django Reinhardt’s celebrated Nuages, pianist Frank Braley.

And this programme doesn’t neglect the classics of the violin, including Ysaÿe’s magnificent Berceuse de l'enfant pauvre. Vieuxtemps’s famous set of variations on Yankee Doodle is here performed for the first time in its version with orchestra.

‘It would be difficult to find a simpler and more poignant subject’, Massenet remarked during the composition of Ariane, a vast score in five acts premiered at the Paris Opéra in October 1906. The libretto by Catulle Mendès is part ancient drama, part symbolist poem, and sets Phaedra and Ariadne, two sisters in love with Theseus, in violent conflict with each other. This epic work does not shrink from relating the combat against the Minotaur, from showing a ship tossed by the raging billows, nor even from transporting the audience to the Underworld where Persephone reigns. Despite its flamboyant orchestration, its grandiose scenography and its triumphant premiere, Ariane remains one of the few Massenet operas never recorded until now. The young Egyptian soprano Amina Edris takes the title role with ardour and passion, surrounded by a cast well versed in the specificities of the French style. The Bavarian Radio Chorus provides dedicated support in the epic scenes, under the baton of Laurent Campellone, a great champion of Massenet.

This series introduces, in words and music, the plot and background of major operas. Using the principal themes and arias, taken from the Naxos recording of the complete work, Thomson Smillie is informative yet entertaining, enabling the listener to get more from this remarkable art form. Massenet's Werther combines a deeply tender story with music of beauty and eloquence. One act alone contains two of the greatest arias in the repertoire: the mezzo-soprano aria 'Va! Laisse couler mes larmes' and the tenor's 'Pourquoi me r�veiller'. In their sentimental power and melodic richness these arias encapsulate the qualities that account for the universal popularity of this great work.

A gorgeous performance from Eva Mei and Michele Pertusi with the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro La Fenice in one of Massenet’s most loved and performed operas, Thaïs.