SAINT-SAËNS Ascanio (Tourniaire)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Camille Saint-Saëns
Genre:
Opera
Label: B-Records
Magazine Review Date: 12/2018
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 190
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: LBM013
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 |
Author: Tim Ashley
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.
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