Delibes: Lakmé / Bonynge, Opéra de Monte-Carlo
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CD Details
Brand: SUTHERLAND/BONYNGEEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1989-10-23
Music Label: Decca
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Lakme: Prelude
- Lakme: Act I - A l'heure accoutumee (Mallika, Hadji, Indians)
- Lakme: Act I - Blanche Dourga (Lamke)
- Lakme: Act I - Lakme, c'est toi qui nous proteges! (Nilakantha)
- Lakme: Act I - Viens, Mallika... Dome epais le jasmin (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act I - Miss Rose, Miss Ellen
- Lakme: Act I - Quand une femme est si jolie
- Lakme: Act I - Leur vertu bizarre manque d'apparat
- Lakme: Act I - Prendre le dessin d'un bijou... Fantaisie aux divins mensonges (Gerald)
- Lakme: Act I - C'est elle...c'est Lakme (Gerald)
- Lakme: Act I - Les fleurs me paraissent plus belles...Pourquoi dans les grands bois (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act I - D'ou viens-tu? Que veux-tu? (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act I - C'est le dieu de la jeunesse (Gerald)
- Lakme: Act I - Entr'acte
- Lakme: Act II - (Beginning) - Allons, avant que midi sonne (Chinese And Hindu Pedlars And Merchants)
- Lakme: Act II - (Beginning) - Ils sont assourdissants! (Miss Bentson)
- Lakme: Act II - (Beginning) - Dances (Terana-Rektah-Persian) (Crowd)
- Lakme: Act II - (Beginning) - Voyez donc ce vieillard et cette jeune fille (Rose)
- Lakme: Act II - (Beginning) - Lakme, ton doux regard se voile (Nilakantha)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Ah, c'est de ta douleur (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Ou va la jeune Indoue (Air des clochettes - Bell Song) (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - La rage me devore (Nilakantha)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Au milieu des chants d'allegresse (Nilakantha)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Le maitre ne pense qu'a sa vengeance
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Lakme! Lakme! C'est toi! (Gerald)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Dans la foret pres de nous (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - O Dourga, toi qui renais (Brahmins, Worshippers)
- Lakme: Act II - (Conclusion) - Voyez cette ville en fete (Ellen)
- Lakme: Act II. (Conclusion) - Entr'acte
- Lakme: Act III - Sous le ciel tout etoile (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act III - Quel vague souvenir alourdit ma pensee...Ah! viens, dans la foret profonde (Gerald)
- Lakme: Act III - La, je pourrai t'entendre (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act III - Vivant! -- Ah! Frederick! (Gerald)
- Lakme: Act III - Ils allaient deux a deux (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act III - Tu m'as donne le plus doux reve (Lakme)
- Lakme: Act III - C'est lui! C'est lui! (Nilakantha)
Music reviews of Delibes: Lakmé / Bonynge, Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Music Review: Sutherland not authentic but enjoyable in dubious opera
Rating: 4 Stars
I'm having a real difficulty in formulating an objective opinion about this recording. This is mainly due to the fact that I dislike the opera.
"Lakme" is French exoticism dating from the 1880s. Its obvious model is Bizet's "Les Pecheurs de perles," French exoticism from a generation earlier. The emulation includes dramatic structure. Both operas have a big duet toward the front, the Flower Duet in "Lakme" and "Au fond du temple saint," the big tenor-baritone duet in "The Pearl Fishers." After a longish interval, both have a flashy, showpiece aria, the Bell Song for Lakmé, Delibes' soprano, and "Je crois entendre encore" for Nadir, Bizet's tenor. In both operas, these are the only parts that are widely known.
As a music drama, a complete work of art, "The Pearl Fishers" is successful. It succeeds, even with a plot so cheesy that it could have served as the screenplay for a 1940 movie starring Dorothy Lamour and John Hall. It works because of the consistency of Bizet's musical intentions. The big duet is a tremendous set-piece but the tenor and the baritone are absolutely consistent with themselves and the rest of the opera. The flashy tenor aria is a crowd pleaser, but it is also exactly the sort of thing that soggy and feather-brained Nadir would be expected to sing.
"Lakme" lacks that vital consistency. It is at least two separate things clumsily rolled up together. For my own personal palate, they form an indigestible lump. If you strip away the Flower Duet and the Bell Song from "Lakme," you find an opera written not in the idiom of Bizet but of Offenbach. It's Offenbach deprived of most of his wit, of course, but his characteristic bounce and jog-trot settings are there. Still looking at Offenbach, Delibes might have taken "The Tales of Hoffmann" to heart, for the wind-up doll's showpiece aria and the barcarolle duet both--bam!--kick that opera up a notch, as Emeril might say. I think the Flower Duet and the Bell Song were intended to yield the same effect, but where Offenbach expanded and raised up what was always intrinsic to his opera, Delibes just tossed in two orphans, pleasant-sounding but alien. The effect, it seems to me, is almost as unsettling as inserting "Mild und Leise," Isolde's love and death aria, into "The Pirates of Penzance."
(It hardly seems possible, but the plot of "Lakme" is even less coherent than that of "The Pearl Fishers." This is partly explained by the fact that in an act of good 19th Century chauvinism, Delibes and his librettist changed the original tale of French misbehavior in exotic Polynesia into a tale of English misbehavior in exotic India.)
This performance is in the mainstream of Bonynge-Sutherland collaborations. Keys and tempi are both adjusted to display Dame Joan in the very best light. And Sutherland delivers, beyond a doubt. If you are impressed by a huge voice, dazzling agility and phenomenal high notes, you will love her in this "Lakmé." If you are appalled by mushy diction and dismayed by unerringly droopy dramatics, she will drive you around the bend in this "Lakme." For myself, I quite enjoy Dame Joan, although I absolutely refuse to believe that Leo Delibes had anything in mind remotely like her profoundly un-French style of singing when he wrote the thing.
An earlier Amazon reviewer has selected Jane Berbié for special praise and dismissed the rest of the cast as sub-par. I must respectfully disagree. Berbie had quite an extensive recording career in supporting roles. In my opinion, she was a solid performer, well worth listening to, always competent, but never brilliant. Gabriel Bacquier turned in yet another textbook example of French singing and French style. Alain Vanzo, that shamefully under-recorded and under-regarded tenor, extracted everything that could be wrought from the thankless role of Gerald.
There you have it, a good, if inauthentic performance from Sutherland, and good to excellent work from her supporting players, all in an opera I don't like. For those who hold a higher opinion of "Lakme" than I do, I think this recording is worth four stars.
Description of Delibes: Lakmé / Bonynge, Opéra de Monte-Carlo
No Description Available.Genre: Classical Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 21-NOV-1989
Delibes's opera Lakmé is full of gorgeous melodies, even if you don't count the coloratura sensation, the famous "Bell Song." That aria virtually demands a soprano of Sutherland's agility and ease, and it gets it here. Even the few singers who can match her in the upper altitudes can't do it with a voice so rich and full. Sutherland's is a Lakmé beyond comparison with twittering, thin-voiced, coloratura specialists. She did make this recording at a time when her diction was mushy and her vocal lines sometimes drooped, so she's not beyond criticism. But revel in the voice; after all, Lakmé is a cardboard character, and the opera, for all its considerable charms, isn't another Ring cycle. Sutherland's colleagues are excellent, too. Vanzo was one of the finest lyric tenors of his generation and is by far the best Gérald on disc. Jane Berbié and Gabriel Bacquier are also unmatched, and Bonynge's conducting is idiomatic and flowing. Add engineering from Decca/London's golden age of recording, and here's a Lakmé to treasure. --Dan Davis
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