Opéra d’Aran : Un Opéra signé Bécaud

Description

Gilbert Bécaud is the most sung French artist in the world and possesses an incomparable sense of words and melody. An essential figure of French pop at the turn of the 1960s, his songs “Age tendre et tête de bois” and “Salut les copains” were borrowed by the most iconic youth television shows, and his most famous song, “Et maintenant,” had just been released (1961). Gilbert Bécaud, then at the height of his fame, undertook, against the direction his artistic career was taking, the crazy gamble of composing an opera in which he could combine a lyrical drama with his talents as a popular melodist. Before becoming “Monsieur 100 000 volts,” Bécaud had received classical training at the Nice Conservatory and had begun his career by composing numerous film scores, notably for Marcel Carné. This enigmatic work, with a libretto by Pierre Delanoë, Jacques Emmanuel and Louis Amade, brought together the artistic elite of Paris for its performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1962. An opera that then toured the world for more than 30 years. Directed by Laurent Balandras and Olivier Julien in agreement with the Gilbert Bécaud estate, this box set offers a restored version of the opera, with for the first time documents from unreleased magnetic tapes from the artist’s personal archives.