Both the music and especially the central figure on this release by British soprano Carolyn Sampson will be largely unfamiliar to most listeners, for the vocal music of the French Baroque has received many fewer contextual studies on recordings than its English and Italian counterparts. Marie Fel was the star singer of mid-18th century Paris, a Bordeaux native who was discovered by an agent of the Paris Opera when she was 20. Roughly as Senesino was to Handel, she was an inspiration to Rameau, and many other composers wrote ...
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Both the music and especially the central figure on this release by British soprano Carolyn Sampson will be largely unfamiliar to most listeners, for the vocal music of the French Baroque has received many fewer contextual studies on recordings than its English and Italian counterparts. Marie Fel was the star singer of mid-18th century Paris, a Bordeaux native who was discovered by an agent of the Paris Opera when she was 20. Roughly as Senesino was to Handel, she was an inspiration to Rameau, and many other composers wrote for her as well. Sampson tries to penetrate Fel's musicality, and the album is not just a compilation of works associated with her. She sings a sacred aria (Joseph Hector Fiocco's Laudate pueri, track 12) with the ornamentation Fel herself wrote out, and she even ventures into the Occitan language, which Fel spoke natively, for the extremely unusual Gasouillats auzeléts by Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (track 11). Speakers of Occitan are invited to judge her pronunciation (an...
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