1 CD
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€ 19.95
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Label Signum Classics |
UPC 0635212073520 |
Catalogue number SIGCD 735 |
Release date 10 March 2023 |
“I recorded a disc, Voyages, with Joseph Middleton in 2017, for Signum, of songs set to poems by Baudelaire and Goethe, and I was keen to sing more French repertoire. This new disc, Visions illuminées, is ensemble-led, there’s no conductor, and it comprises new arrangements of songs by Debussy, Ravel, Duparc, Chausson and others. The music is very luscious and Romantic. The central focus is Britten’s Les Illuminations, alongside which there are orchestral arrangements of well-known songs such as Duparc’s ‘Chanson triste’ and Fauré’s ‘Clair de lune’, as well as new arrangements of Debussy and Ravel by Robin Holloway. There’s also a song by Chabrier that has never been heard before: the music was almost destroyed when the composer’s publishing house closed, and it’s been rescued by French scholars. This is the first recording.” - Mary Bevan
Mary Bevan (soprano) read Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Trinity College, Cambridge, before training at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She became an Associate Artist of Classical Opera in 2010, and is a winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist award and the UK Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent in Music.
Her opera roles include Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro), Despina (Così fan tutte), Papagena (The Magic Flute), Yum-Yum (The Mikado), Second Niece (Peter Grimes) and Rebecca (in the world première of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys) for English National Opera, where she is a Harewood Artist, Gerechtigkeit (Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots), Tamiri (Il re pastore), Servilia (La clemenza di Tito) and Emma (Thomas Arne’s Alfred) for Classical Opera, Zerlina (Don Giovanni) for Garsington Opera, Belinda (Dido and Aeneas) for The English Concert, and – for The Royal Opera – Music/ Euridice (Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo) at the Roundhouse and the title role in Luigi Rossi’s Orpheus at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Her extensive concert engagements have included Bellezza (Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno) with the Dunedin Consort, a Handel residency with Emanuelle Haïm at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and Handel’s Messiah with The English Concert and the English Chamber Orchestra, and she has appeared at the BBC Proms, Edinburgh International Festival, Spitalfields Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival. Her recordings include ‘Handel in Italy’ with London Early Opera for Signum Classics, Handel’s The Triumph of Time and Truth and Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day with Ludus Baroque for Delphian Records, and Ludwig Thuille songs with Joseph Middleton and Mendelssohn songs with Malcolm Martineau, both for Champs Hill Records.