Raoul Barbe-Bleue

Description

This first world recording of a forgotten score by Grétry was born from the collaboration of the Norwegian festival Barokkfest and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles. Represented a few weeks before the French Revolution, Raoul Barbe-bleue is an unclassifiable opéra-comique, with astonishing musical and dramatic implications that will inspire Offenbach. A medieval and wonderful universe coexists in this rewriting of Perrault's tale, which already announces, both through its writing and its taste for horror, the coming romanticism. Far from the standards of the genre, Raoul Barbe-bleue presents a willingly political fresco and depicts a cruel nobility, sometimes rendered grotesque by the mixture of tragic register and comic springs, from cross-dressing to the suffering servant. The drama, imbued with a mysterious atmosphere (one thinks of Weber's Singspiel) enjoys a musical writing that supports the suspense, and has little to do with the naive simplicity of the composer's early works. The elegance and refinement of Grétry serve a dramatic power that is reminiscent, in the overture, of the introit of Mozart's Requiem. Recorded in the magnificent theater of Trondheim (Norway), and supported by a brilliant cast under the baton of Martin Wahlberg, Raoul Barbe-Bleue possesses a surprising richness, both for the novice and for the specialist.