The world might not have been clamoring for a performance of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande on historical instruments, specified quite precisely as "instruments français de 1900, cordes en boyaux [gut]," but this rendering of the opera by the specialist group Les Siècles and conductor François-Xavier Roth saw strong commercial success in the spring of 2022. Partly it was the sound; the music was prepared for a production at the Opéra de Lille that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the recording went ahead ...
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The world might not have been clamoring for a performance of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande on historical instruments, specified quite precisely as "instruments français de 1900, cordes en boyaux [gut]," but this rendering of the opera by the specialist group Les Siècles and conductor François-Xavier Roth saw strong commercial success in the spring of 2022. Partly it was the sound; the music was prepared for a production at the Opéra de Lille that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the recording went ahead in an empty hall. The results are splendid, merging an appropriate ambiance with the silence of a studio. That served Roth's band of period instruments extremely well. The winds, ranging from edgy to melancholy, come in the shades of tone Debussy would have heard, and the gut strings are edgy as well. One can debate the way Roth minimizes the string vibrato in the Baroque-orchestra manner, but it undeniably adds to the impact of the drama. The singers, none major stars, are solid,...
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