Under Richard Bonynge’s expert guidance Decca looked out the strongest of the rare Massenet operas for revival in the 1970s. Therese is a two-act opera, lasting about 70 minutes, which makes a sure-fire evening in the theatre, if you are lucky enough to catch it. The style of the piece is a cross between the heady romanticism of Werther and the verismo that the composer had tried out a decade earlier in La Navarraise. It is set during the French Revolution and moves swiftly to a passionate denouement, when Therese sees her husband being carried off to the guillotine and throws herself into the crowd with a cry of “Vive le roi!” – a splendidly melodramatic ending.
Huguette Tourangeau sings the title-role with her inimitably plummy tone, which contrives to make half the text unintelligible (though not, fortunately for us, her parting line). Ryland Davies’s light tenor is well employed as her lover Armand and Louis Quilico sings strongly as her husband, Andre. Bonynge himself holds nothing back and drives the opera to a suitably hair-raising conclusion. I have not heard the other set with Agnes Baltsa, originally on the Atlantis label and due to be reissued shortly by Orfeo, but this performance waves the flag for Therese with revolutionary zeal in the meantime.'