Mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa has taken on sultrier tones, both vocally and visually, since her debut album of "pants"-role arias, Oh, Boy!, in 2016. Here, inspired by her own part-Spanish ancestry, she essays a set of Spanish and Spanish-influenced French orchestral and voice-and-piano songs. Not all of the selections are strictly the séguedilles promised in the title, but they all reflect the rhythms of the seguidilla folk dance or similar ones. Bizet is here, of course, but Crebassa wisely avoids full-on operatic ...
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Mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa has taken on sultrier tones, both vocally and visually, since her debut album of "pants"-role arias, Oh, Boy!, in 2016. Here, inspired by her own part-Spanish ancestry, she essays a set of Spanish and Spanish-influenced French orchestral and voice-and-piano songs. Not all of the selections are strictly the séguedilles promised in the title, but they all reflect the rhythms of the seguidilla folk dance or similar ones. Bizet is here, of course, but Crebassa wisely avoids full-on operatic interpretations of Carmen; her intention is to go more deeply into the emotional content of the Spanish style, often quietly melancholy and an over-the-top Carmen would have distracted from that. Some of the other selections are common enough recital pieces, but there are some impressive rarities as well. The song cycle Seis canciones castellanas by the Basque composer Jesús Guridi and the five-part Combat del somni of Mompou are rarely encountered. The Mompou cycle is something of...
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