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DVD Review | Bavarian State Opera, War and Peace, Jurowski; Tcherniakov

By John Gilks on 12 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Prokofiev: War and Peace Olga Kulchynska (Natasha), Andrei Zhilikhovsky (Andrei), Arsen Soghomonyan (Pierre), Violeta Urmana (Marya Dmitriyevna Akhrosimova), Dmitry Ulyonov (Kutuzov), Arsen Soghomonyan (Bezukhov); Andrei Zhilikovsky (Bolkonsky); Victoria Karkacheva (Hélène); Olga Guryakova (Peronskaya), Bekhzod Davronov (Anatole), Christina Bock (Marya Bolkonskaya); Bayerische Staatsoper Orchestra and Chorus; Vladimir Jurowski, conductor; Dmitri Tcherniakov, director Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings, 2025 Bayerische Staatsoper had planned its March 2023 production of Prokofiev’s War and Peace (and had likely contracted the small army of singers required) well before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. That event naturally provoked a rethink given that the opera is, in part, a…

CD Review | Puccini: Tosca; Burrato, Tetelman, Tézier

By Francis Muzzu on 5 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Puccini: Tosca Eleanora Burrato and Alice Fiorelli, sopranos; Jonathan Tetelman and Matteo Macchioni, tenors; Ludovic Tézier, baritone; Giorgi Manoshvili, Davide Giangregorio, Nicolò Ceriani and Constantino Funicci, basses; Orchestra, Coro e Voci Bianchi dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia – Roma; Daniel Harding, conductor Deutsche Grammophon, 2025 Does the world need another recording of Puccini’s Tosca? Probably not, as multitudinous versions are available. So, does anything set this new release apart from the crowd? In one major way, yes. The performance was caught live last October at the orchestra’s home turf, the Santa Cecilia Hall. Time and place are noteworthy for several…

CD Review | Primum Opus, Voces Domini; Alta Caelis

By Justin Bernard on 5 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Primum Opus Voces Domini; Jean-Claude Picard, conductor and composer Alta Caelis, 2024 On the Alta Caelis label, the Musica Sacra in Ecclesia series presents its first recording of sacred music as sung for decades at Quebec’s Notre-Dame Cathedral basilica. The album, entitled Primum Opus, includes Gregorian repertoire and polyphonic motets for four male voices on the theme of the Ascension of Christ and the Immaculate Conception, performed by the Voces Domini ensemble. The choirmaster, Jean-Claude Picard, includes some of his own pieces to the program, alongside others by Quebec composers such as Denis Bédard, and a number of special pieces…

CD Review | Rameau: Platée; Château de Versailles Spectacles

By Kaitlyn Chan on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Rameau: Platée Mathias Vidal, Zachary Wilder, tenors; Marie Lys, Cécile Achille, sopranos; Alexandre Duhamel, David Witczak,baritones; Juliette Mey, mezzo-soprano; Cyril Costanzo, bass; La Chapelle Harmonique; Valentin Tournet, conductor Château de Versailles Spectacles, 2025 This recent recording of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s comic opera Platée is a delight. One hardly even misses the visuals for its several, requisite French Baroque dance sequences. Instead, this double album offers the listener an opportunity to luxuriate in some expert vocals and orchestral playing. Platée follows the story of a frog-like nymph who thinks Jupiter, the king of the gods, is in love with her. Stagings of…

CD Review | Unbroken: Music from Ukraine, Viktoria Grynenko

By John Gilks on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Unbroken: Music from Ukraine Viktoria Grynenko, violin Leaf Music, 2025 Unbroken is a CD containing an hour of music by living Ukrainian composers, played by violinist Viktoria Grynenko and various collaborators. There are five extremely varied pieces on the album. Through Closed Doors is a 2014 Anna Pidgorna piece for two violins, inspired by a door smashed in with a hatchet and what may be on either side of it. Grynenko is joined by Guillaume Tardif for a piece that uses the violins in a sort of conversation where repeated figures play over drone-like elements and bits of folk tunes…

CD Review | Oiseaux de passage, Natalie Dessay & Philippe Cassard

By Pascal Blanchet on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews, Piano, Vocal

Oiseaux de passage Natalie Dessay, soprano; Philippe Cassard, piano; André Previn, Stephen Sondheim, Gian Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn, Maurice Ravel, Louis Beydts, Francis Poulenc, composers La Dolce Volta, 2025 Twenty years ago this year, Natalie Dessay gave a major recital with orchestra in Montreal, invited by Opéra de Montréal as part of its annual benefit concert. The singer, who had just resumed her activities after two episodes of vocal problems, was eagerly awaited. We knew her thanks to many iconic recordings, but also from DVDs, notably in a scathing version of Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus…

CD Review | Rebelle: Hommage à Célestine Galli-Marié, Eva Zaïcik

By Pascal Blanchet on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Rebelle: Hommage à Célestine Galli-Marié Eva Zaïcik, mezzo-soprano; Orchestre national de Lille, Pierre Dumoussaud, conductor; Ferdinand Poise, Ambroise Thomas, Georges Bizet, Louis Deffès, Jacques Offenbach, Victor Massé, Ernest Guiraud, Émile Paladilhe, Jules Massenet, Albert Grisar, Jules Cohen, composers Alpha Classics, 2025 In this year of the 150th anniversary of the creation of Bizet’s Carmen, Palazzetto Bru Zane, the originator of so many fine rediscovery projects, has had the excellent idea of focusing on the role’s creator, Célestine Galli-Marié, via a rising mezzo-soprano of today, Eva Zaïcik. An excellent idea, because this legendary performer left her mark not only on opera’s…

CD Review | Strauss: Salome; Malin Byström; Chandos

By John Gilks on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Strauss: Salome Malin Byström, soprano; Katarina Dalayman, mezzo-soprano; Gerhard Siegel and Bror Magnus Tødenes, tenors; Johan Reuter, baritone; Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Edward Gardner, conductor Chandos, 2025 The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra’s trip to the Edinburgh Festival in 2022 included a strongly-cast concert version of Richard Strauss’s Salome which was recorded and has now been issued on SACD by Chandos. It’s very good. Malin Byström, in the title role, is a powerful presence who can be subtle, even lyrical, where needed—such as in the wheedling discussion with Herod over her “reward.” Johan Reuter is rock-solid as Jochanaan and the recording engineers have…

CD Review | Current/Clements: Missing

By John Gilks on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Current/Clements: Missing Caitlin Wood, Melody Courage, sopranos; Andrea Ludwig, Marion Newman, Michelle Lafferty, mezzo-sopranos; Asitha Tennekoon, tenor; Evan Korbut, baritone; Continuum Ensemble, Timothy Long, conductor Bright Shiny Things, July 2025 Missing is an 80-minute opera about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls with a libretto by Marie Clements and music by Brian Current. It’s sung in English and Gitxsan and great care has been taken that the Gitxsan linguistic and cultural elements are accurate and appropriate. The work has some history. It’s a West Coast Canadian-based project, as its Highway of Tears and Vancouver settings suggest, and the libretto…

CD Review | Lalo: Le Roi d’Ys, Bru Zane

By John Gilks on 4 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews

Lalo: Le Roi d’Ys Judith van Wanroij, soprano; Kate Aldrich, mezzo-soprano; Cyrille Dubois, tenor; Jérôme Boutillier and Christian Helmer, baritones; Nicolas Courjal (bass); Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra; Hungarian National Choir; György Vashegyi, conductor Bru Zane, 2025 Édouard Lalo’s opera Le Roi d’Ys had a somewhat tortuous journey to the stage before premiering at Paris’s Opéra-Comique in 1888. In the intervening 10 years between its composition and premiere, Lalo pared it down from the traditional five acts with ballet to a very tight three-act structure lasting only an hour and 45 minutes. Also, unusually for a work that played at the…