Pauline Viardot - concert by Aude Extrémo & Étienne Manchon 

Aude Extrémo, mezzo-soprano
Étienne Manchon, piano
Concert programme
Pauline VIARDOT:
00:00:54 L'Orage
00:04:31 Géorgienne
00:06:54 Berceuse cosaque
00:12:37 Évocation
00:15:41 Les Ombres de minuit
00:19:12 Aimez-moi
00:21:46 Haï-luli
00:25:01 Ici-bas tous les lilas meurent
00:26:52 Solitude
00:29:10 Les Filles de Cadix
00:31:55 Havanaise
00:36:57 L'Absence
Jules MASSENET:
00:38:49 Marie-Magdeleine - Air de Meryem, “Ô mes sœurs”
Christoph Willibald GLUCK:
00:44:17 Orphée et Eurydice - Air d’Orphée, “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice”
Giacomo MEYERBEER:
00:49:47 Le Prophète - Air de Fidès, "Ah ! mon fils”
Camille SAINT-SAËNS:
00:53:27 Samson et Dalila - Air de Dalila, "Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix”
Few female figures were as important as Pauline Viardot in Romantic France: she was not only the most prominent mezzo-soprano (premiering works by Meyerbeer, Saint-Saëns and Gounod), but also a prolific, demanding composer in her own right. Like most women composers of her time, she had to confine herself mainly to the mélodie. But the variety of poems she set, the richness of her inspiration and her obvious technical mastery of the voice balanced the narrowness of the genre, rivalling, at times, the ambitions of opera. Too rarely performed today, Pauline Viardot’s works open up to all the experiences of the Romantic mélodie: neo-Baroque, European folklore, exoticism, and popular regionalism.
📖 Programme notes: bru-zane.com/w...
Recorded in Venice, Palazzetto Bru Zane, March 2021
Video: Maco Film
On the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day
#PaulineViardot