All products were chosen independently by our editorial team. This review contains affiliate links and we may receive a commission for purchases made. Please read our affiliates FAQ page to find out more.

Saint-Saëns: Phryné

Florie Valiquette, Cyrille Dubois et al; Choeur du Concert Spirituel; Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen Normandie/Hervé Niquet (BruZane)

Our rating

4

Published: March 17, 2022 at 4:31 pm

Saint-Saëns Phryné Florie Valiquette, Cyrille Dubois, Thomas Dolié, Anaïs Constans, François Rougier; Choeur du Concert Spirituel; Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen Normandie/Hervé Niquet BruZane BZ1047 60:22 mins

Saint-Säens’s posthumous reputation does him few favours and Palazzetto Bru Zane seems determined to rescue the composer’s good musical name. Phryné is that organisation’s sixth recording of his forgotten music.

This short opéra-comique from the 1890s takes its musical cue from Gérôme’s celebrated salon painting, Phryné devant l’aréopagein which a young Athenian woman is disrobed before the city’s judges to prove her beauty. With little chance of staging that, Saint-Säens opts for a story about young love – Phryné and Nicias – besting a hypocritical guardian-uncle, the magistrate Dicéphile.

In revisiting classical Greece, Phryné is probably rebuking a younger generation of French composers who were whoring after strange Nordic Gods East of the Rhine; but it’s really Gallic delight in calling an old fool to heel with echoes of Molière and Offenbach.

Florie Valiquette is a winning Phryné, and Cyrille Dubois all that you could hope for in a French tenor as her beloved Nicias – their Act II duet deserves to be much better known. Yet it’s Saint-Säens who is his own hero: the ensemble that ends Act I is masterly, and as ever a silky orchestrator works his magic – the prelude to Act II is spun gold in the hands of the admirable Hervé Niquet.

Christopher Cook

More reviews

Herbert Blomstedt conducts Beethoven’s Choral Symphony No. 9

Thomas Adès conducts Samuel Dale Johnson and the LSO

Gerhild Romberger and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 3

Fuminori Maro Shinozaki performs Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Don Juan with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo

Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Job and Symphony No. 9

Stupka conducts Dvorak’s Symphonies Nos 8 & 9

This website is owned and published by Our Media Ltd. www.ourmedia.co.uk
© Our Media 2024