SAINT-SAËNS Ascanio (Tourniaire)

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Camille Saint-Saëns

Genre:

Opera

Label: B-Records

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 190

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: LBM013

LBM013. SAINT-SAËNS Ascanio (Tourniaire)

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Ascanio Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer
Bastien Combe, D’Estourville, Baritone
Bernard Richter, Ascanio, Tenor
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer
Choeur de la Haute école de musique de Genève
Chœur du Grand Théâtre de Genève
Clémence Tilquin, Colombe d’Estourville, Soprano
Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Scozzone, Mezzo soprano
Guillaume Tourniaire, Conductor
Jean Teitgen, François I, Bass
Jean-François Lapointe, Benvenuto Cellini, Baritone
Joé Bertili, Pagolo, Bass-baritone
Karina Gauvin, Duchesse d’Étampes, Soprano
Maxence Billiemaz, D’Orbec, Tenor
Mohammed Haidar, Beggar, Baritone
Olivia Doutney, An Ursuline, Soprano
Orchestre de la Haute école de musique de Genève
Raphaël Hardmeyer, Charles Quint, Bass-baritone
Like so many works written for the Paris Opéra, where it was first performed in 1890, Ascanio never reached the stage in the form its composer intended. Shortly after completing the score in 1888, Saint-Saëns suffered a severe breakdown following the death of his mother, and eventually entrusted preparations for the premiere to his librettist Louis Gallet and the composer Ernest Guiraud. Exactly who decided on changes is unclear; but by the time Saint-Saëns heard the work late in its opening run, the score had been cut to bits, with two crucial scenes drastically telescoped into one. This effective abridgement formed the basis of its subsequent revivals and the opera was only heard complete last November, when Guillaume Tourniaire used Saint-Saëns’s autograph score for the series of concert performances in Geneva that form the basis of this outstanding recording.

Gallet’s source was Paul Meurice’s 1852 play Benvenuto Cellini. Saint-Saëns adopted the title Ascanio in deference to Berlioz, though Cellini is very much the central character, and the opera, set during his 1540 Paris sojourn as goldsmith to François I, deals with his attempts to rescue Ascanio, his favourite pupil, from the clutches of François’s mistress, the Duchesse d’Étampes, a lethal femme fatale who takes lovers behind the king’s back then murders them to forestall accusations of infidelity. Ascanio and Cellini, however, are also rivals for the affections of the virginal if far from naive Colombe d’Estourville, infuriating not only the Duchesse but also Cellini’s possessive model Scozzone, who eventually becomes the tragic casualty of the Duchesse’s scheming.

The score is magnificent, if uneven. The dramaturgy wobbles in places, notably in Act 2, where Saint-Saëns’s need to give four of his protagonists their principal arias in succession holds up the action. The big public scenes are comparable in their grandeur to the finale of the Organ Symphony and every bit as thrilling. Colombe and Ascanio’s duets are notably beautiful, and there’s a marvellous scene in Act 3 when François and the Emperor Charles V, visiting Paris en route to Flanders, vie with each other to be Cellini’s principal patron. Deeming it Wagnerian, Saint-Saëns’s contemporaries compared it with Meistersinger, not entirely without reason. Debussy, meanwhile, must have been familiar with it: the similarities between Colombe’s unaccompanied ‘Mon coeur est sous la pierre’ and Mélisande’s ‘Mes longs cheveux descendent’ are too close to be coincidental.

The recording, meanwhile, is tremendous in the way it captures the excitement felt by singers, players and audience in the rediscovery of a significant work by a composer whose output is still in a process of re-evaluation. Tourniaire conducts with terrific élan and commitment, while his orchestra, a formidable student ensemble from Geneva’s Haute École de Musique, play as if their lives depend on it. The choral singing is spine-tinglingly good, the soloists consistently superb. Jean-François Lapointe makes a tireless Cellini, charismatic, witty and astute, yet tellingly hampered by failures of emotional understanding when confronted with Ève Maud Hubeaux’s volatile yet adoring Scozzone. Bernard Richter’s Ascanio and Clémence Tilquin’s Colombe sound tender and sexy together. Karina Gauvin’s Duchesse dispenses scorn and seduction in equal measure, showering Lapointe and Richter with invective and twisting Jean Teitgen’s sensualist François round her little finger with caressingly beautiful phrases. I admit to being swept away by the whole thing. It’s a major achievement and highly recommended.

Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music. 

Stream on Presto Music | Buy from Presto Music

Gramophone Print

  • Print Edition

From £6.67 / month

Subscribe

Gramophone Digital Club

  • Digital Edition
  • Digital Archive
  • Reviews Database
  • Full website access

From £8.75 / month

Subscribe

                              

If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.