Camille Erlanger: La Sorcière (fp 1912)

[Alan Howe]

Announced as an October 4th release on B-Records, the label that gave us Saint-Saëns' Ascanio:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/erlanger-la-sorciere/hnum/11965616    (3 CDs)

[Justin]

Is this the first opera recording of d'Erlanger? I know there is an excerpt from this work Tess.

[britishcomposer]

jpc somehow mixed up the two Erlangers. La Sorciere is by Camille Erlanger as you see on the cd cover. His opera L'aube rouge was given in Wexford in 2023.

I don't know if any of Frederic d'Erlanger's operas has been produced or staged in recent time.

[Alan Howe]

Oh dear. Thanks for the correction, Mathias. My fault for not noticing.

[Alan Howe]

Here's an excerpt from the set:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQQLqM_L-Wg&list=OLAK5uy_mWK7zowZ8trs1SbICEcKWQlXFMdxLOQwQ

[Maury]

Thanks for this! Anything similar to late Massenet has me all ears. I was rather surprised to see more on-line than in the vinyl or CD listings. Are these videos appearing on YT radio broadcasts ? I really like the writing of the YT excerpt (1953??) of his opera Aphrodite with the piano score attached. Interestingly there are a fair number of book scores of Erlanger available. But thanks again for someone I completely missed.

[Alan Howe]

Yes - an exciting release for sure.

[Mark Thomas]

The set is now available (but I've not listened to my copy yet). As britishcomposer mentioned in an earlier post, another Erlanger opera, L'Aube Rouge, was performed as part of the Wexford Festival Opera season last year and I've uploaded a recording of RTE's live broadcast in our Downloads Board here.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Mark.

La Sorcière is now out - and it's in a very 'perfumed', very French late-romantic idiom. Dating from 1912, this will appeal to opera lovers who favour the sort of luscious writing found in, say, Erlanger's contemporary Charpentier (e.g. in Louise), although it lacks the memorable 'big number' of that work (e.g. 'Depuis le Jour'). Nevertheless, a really exciting find, very well sung and performed here.

This release features a substantial book which holds the three CDs and contains background material on the operatic trends of the period, plus a thorough analysis of the music and a French-English libretto. Just one criticism: the orange print used (sparingly) is nevertheless difficult to read with comfort.

[Maury]

NB US Amazon is giving a November 1 release date.

[eschiss1]

Pickiness: fairly sure internal nouns (eg Depuis le jour, La sorcière) use lowercase with a few exceptions.

[tuatara442442]

I learned Italian in university but my teachers never clearly told me that. After these years I figured out this bit of Roman Language spelling rule in titles and can never stand things like Andante Sostenuto ever since (which I always prefer before the "conversion"!)