As with Opium, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky's earlier collection of French art songs, some could raise all kinds of objections to Green, which is devoted to settings of texts by Paul Verlaine. There's zero historical justification for having a countertenor sing this music, or moreover for having it accompanied by a string quartet as it is in some of the transcriptions made here by piano accompanist Jérôme Ducros. There is a vast body of unreleased music in the Baroque and Renaissance repertories in which Jaroussky ...
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As with Opium, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky's earlier collection of French art songs, some could raise all kinds of objections to Green, which is devoted to settings of texts by Paul Verlaine. There's zero historical justification for having a countertenor sing this music, or moreover for having it accompanied by a string quartet as it is in some of the transcriptions made here by piano accompanist Jérôme Ducros. There is a vast body of unreleased music in the Baroque and Renaissance repertories in which Jaroussky specializes, and the countertenor voice can't match the production of the true soprano. And...all the objections evaporate once again when one starts listening to the music. Is it just the sheer beauty of Jaroussky's tone? The fact that at this point in his career he could sing a list of URLs and sound pretty good? All this is apposite, but there's more. The poetry of Verlaine, already ambiguous as to gender, is possibly even better suited to Jaroussky than were the drug-inspired materials...
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