Jules Massenet was 30 years old in 1872 when Don César de Bazan was performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris; it was his first full-length opera to be produced. The "1888 version" proclaimed here was not a full-scale reworking, but a reconstruction by Massenet from the vocal score after the orchestral parts burned, and it is unknown how many changes he made. The opera failed in Paris but was reasonably successful in performances elsewhere as Massenet became more famous. It receives its first recording here, from the group ...
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Jules Massenet was 30 years old in 1872 when Don César de Bazan was performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris; it was his first full-length opera to be produced. The "1888 version" proclaimed here was not a full-scale reworking, but a reconstruction by Massenet from the vocal score after the orchestral parts burned, and it is unknown how many changes he made. The opera failed in Paris but was reasonably successful in performances elsewhere as Massenet became more famous. It receives its first recording here, from the group that rediscovered it, the marvelously named Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes, and an attractive group of singers that catch the fanciful, slightly antique tone of the romantic comedy libretto (the tale dates back to Victor Hugo's play Ruy Blas ). The bad rap on the opera at the beginning was that it was poorly shaped, but with intelligent excerpting, conductor Mathieu Romano avoids that issue, and what's left is a sequence of really good tunes. One might not identify the...
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