Mélodies

Description

200th anniversary of the birth of Pauline Viardot Pauline Viardot, who died in Paris on May 18, 1910, was born in the same city on July 18, 1821, exactly two centuries ago. An immense singer celebrated and adored by artists and intellectuals of her time as an extraordinary spirit and musician, it took the feminist movements of the early 21st century for her significance in the history of ideas and music to emerge. In this CD, alongside the great scenes from classical theater such as the monologues of Hermione and Phèdre from Racine, you will find joyful farces based on two fables by La Fontaine, The Oak and the Reed (created with Chopin at the piano…) and The Cobbler and the Financier. These are certainly not romances, nor are they melodies in conventional ABA forms… They are scenes from theater, a salon theater, a theater in private life, surrounded by privileged friends. With Sara the Bather, probably one of the most beautiful pieces in the piano-voice repertoire (once again, is it a melody?), Pauline pays tribute to the great poet of her century, Victor Hugo, as well as in this overlooked light piece from the writer's youth, The Attractions, of which she herself was unaware of the author. In this selection (which required many sacrifices!), we have juxtaposed Slavic poets (Pushkin, Lermontov, Feth) with traditional Spanish and Italian poetry and French poets such as Musset, Sully-Prudhomme, and Larenaudière. Additionally, there is the strange and unclassifiable German poet Eduard Moerike (writer, painter, defrocked pastor…) whose texts Pauline chose to set to music.