SAINT-SAËNS Prosperine
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Camille Saint-Saëns
Genre:
Opera
Label: Ediciones Singulares
Magazine Review Date: 08/2017
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 94
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: ES1027
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Proserpine |
Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer
Andrew Foster-Williams, Squarocca, Bass Artavazd Sargsyan, Filippo; Gil, Tenor Camille Saint-Saëns, Composer Clémence Tilquin, Une Religieuse, Soprano Flemish Radio Choir Frédéric Antoun, Sabatino, Tenor Jean Teitgen, Renzo, Bass Marie-Adeline Henry, Angiola, Soprano Mathias Vidal, Orlando, Tenor Munich Radio Orchestra Philippe-Nicolas Martin, Ercole, Baritone Ulf Schirmer, Conductor Véronique Gens, Proserpine, Soprano |
Author: Mark Pullinger
Saint-Saëns was very enthusiastic about his opera, travelling to Florence to soak up the atmosphere and later composing at great speed. Apart from Act 2, though, set in a convent, the score wasn’t well received. Camille Bellaigue complained that the drama didn’t really begin until Act 3 … which is where he felt the music began to slide downhill. Saint-Saëns’s score was dismissed as too Wagnerian, or too symphonic – possibly because the Organ Symphony had secured his reputation as an orchestral rather than operatic composer. Commentators had their petty digs, playing on the composer’s name: ‘Cinq sens, mais pas d’âme’ (Five senses, but no soul)!
This recording, made last autumn in Munich under the baton of Ulf Schirmer, reveals Saint-Saëns’s score to be compact, with each of its four acts having a distinct flavour. A pretty siciliana and a stately pavane help evoke the Florentine palazzo of Act 1, while a pretty, Gounod-like Ave Maria opens the convent scene. A stylish tarantella opens Act 3, where Proserpine is disguised as a gypsy, suggesting shades of Carmen (there’s even a fortune-telling scene as she tries to put the frighteners on Angiola). The brief Act 4 is pure melodrama, even when Auguste Vacquerie’s original ending to his play, from which Louis Gallet based his libretto, was watered down from two murders to a single suicide.
The cast is led by Véronique Gens in the title-role, her ever-expressive colouring of text superb, from scornful and haughty courtesan to desperate lover. The role was written for a ‘falcon’ (somewhere between a dramatic soprano and mezzo), taken at the premiere by Caroline Salla, who had starred in Le timbre d’argent (the next of Saint-Saëns’s operas to be resurrected by Palazzetto Bru Zane). Gens doesn’t have the heftiest soprano but does great justice to the role. She is well contrasted with Marie-Adeline Henry’s angelic soprano as Angiola. Frédéric Antoun is a stylish Sabatino, even if he hasn’t the most ringing top notes, while Jean Teitgen’s woolly bass doesn’t have a great deal to do as Renzo. Andrew Foster-Williams’s biting baritone makes for a splendid Squarocca, the rogue who acts as Proserpine’s spy. The Munich Radio Orchestra impress, particularly in the pulsating entr’acte depicting Proserpine’s flight back to Florence.
The discs are housed in a lavishly documented hardback book, which includes a superb analysis of the score by Gérard Condé as well as Saint-Saëns’s self-defence of the work, which he originally published as a pamphlet in 1902. The composer could never understand why his opera never achieved success with critics and the public: ‘I persist in finding Proserpine excellent. The future will show I was right.’ This new recording does his opera full justice.
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