Jules Massenet - Songs with Orchestra II (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Jules Massenet

1. Noël païen
2. Larmes maternelles
3. Élégie
4. Sainte Thérèse prie
5. Don César de Bazan, Act III: Entracte-Sévillana
6. Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe: I. Ô bon printemps
7. Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe: II. Oiseau des bois
8. Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe: III. Chères fleurs
9. Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe: IV. Ô ruisseau
10. Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe: V. Chantez!
11. Orphelines
12. Première danse
13. La Rivière
14. Avril est amoureux
15. Schwanengesang, D. 957: No. 12, Am Meer (transcr. Jules Massenet)
16. Chanson pour elle
17. Départ
18. Expressions lyriques: No. 1, Dialogue
19. Expressions lyriques: No. 2, Les Nuages
20. Expressions lyriques: No. 4, Battements d’ailes
21. Expressions lyriques: No. 7, Nocturne
22. Expressions lyriques: No. 8, Mélancolie
23. Le Petit Jésus
24. La Nuit

Julien Henric, tenor

Thomas Dolié, baritone

Hélène Guilmette, soprano

Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, mezzo-soprano

Orchestre de l'Opéra Normandie Rouen

Pierre Dumoussaud, conductor

Date: 2025

Label: Bru Zane

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Review

I confess to not having heard the first volume in this collection of Massenet’s Chansons et Mélodies as the singers in it were not to my taste; this second issue presenting twenty-four more of his songs with orchestral accompaniment and completing the project, is very much more so, in that all four vocal soloists have fresh, well-produced voices of the kind which appeals to me. Conductor Pierre Dumousaud directed the live recording of Lucie de Lammermoor which recently earned my recommendation and I am something of a Massenet devotee (hence my survey of his lesser-known operas). This single CD comes in a highly attractive cardboard Art Nouveau-style package complete with full, highly informative notes, some well-chosen illustrations and complete texts and translations, so all those factors combined encouraged me to explore this latest release.

All the songs here bear witness to the composer’s exceptional skill as an orchestrator, demonstrating his ability to select just the right instrument and colour to convey a specific mood or emotion. Many are decidedly “operatic” in quality, fluidly moving from quasi-recitative to arioso to aria. The first song is given to the light, pleasant tenor Julien Henric, who finishes the cheerful, melodic “Noël païen” (Pagan Christmas) on a secure, ringing top C – a promising start. His diction is exemplary and Massenet’s orchestration so varied – with identifiable melodic allusions to tunes and tropes familiar from the operas. Baritone Thomas Dolié also has a well-produced voice which is in fact very similar to the tenor’s, except, obviously, in a lower tessitura, and his first song, “Larmes maternelles” (A mother’s tears) is very different in mood, being a sombre, funereal dirge lamenting a mother’s grief for the son fallen in war. The third song, “Elégie”, is another threnody and one that will be familiar to many listeners in one of various instrumental forms rather than this arrangement for soprano and orchestra. The fourth song introduces mezzo-soprano Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, who has a large, fruity tone with good top notes and a quite pronounced, but not objectionable, vibrato. That opening batch is rounded off with the highly “Hispanic” orchestral Entracte-Sévillana from Massenet’s second opera Don César de Bazan – which is slightly odd in that it is not performed here in the arrangement whereby, if it is heard at all, it is usually performed, as a showpiece for solo coloratura soprano.

Next is the set of five songs for vocal quartet in praise of love and nature, Chansons des bois d’Amaranthe, and they are charming. They have a retrospective, madrigal quality, especially the central song, “Chères fleurs” sung by the ensemble a cappella.

This is followed by a medley of seven songs on random Romantic topics ranging from one about orphan girls, gently and sensitively sung by Thomas Dolié, to dancing, April love and lovers’ parting, and an instrumental number: Massenet’s atmospheric adaptation of Schubert’s lovely “Am Meer” from Schwanengesang. “La rivière” is the longest song here, an anthropomorphic fantasy in which the river sings of its many guises, sung in agile, spirited fashion by soprano Hélène Guilmette.

The five songs here in Expressions lyriques were selected from the original set of ten Massenet wrote for celebrated contralto Lucy Arbell and piano, which he then orchestrated; hence, they are all performed here by the mezzo-soprano Bouchard-Lesieury. They are unusual – indeed, they transcend the genre in avant-garde manner – by alternating song and speech which might be somewhat precious for some tastes but the singer’s verbal declamation is arresting without being melodramatic and attests to Massenet’s essentially theatrical sensibility.

The programme finishes with a setting of an orthodox Christian poem as counter-balance to the more “free-thinking” earlier “pagan” song and Massenet’s last venture into the mélodie genre: “La nuit”, a moody but ecstatic contemplation of the glories of the night sky by Victor Hugo.

— Ralph Moore

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Jules Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer. Born near Saint-Étienne, France, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Ambroise Thomas and won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1863. Massenet composed more than 24 operas; his most famous works include Manon, Werther and Thaïs. In addition to opera, he wrote more than 200 songs, a piano concerto, orchestral suites and oratorios. Massenet was also highly influential as a teacher of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné.

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