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Track(s) taken from CDA66248

Bonjour, Suzon!

composer
1861
author of text
Œuvres posthumes, 1860

Stephen Varcoe (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)
Recording details: March 1987
St Paul's Church, New Southgate, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: March 1988
Total duration: 2 minutes 45 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

John Mark Ainsley (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano)

Reviews

‘This generously-filled disc will afford many, many quarts d'heure of pleasure’ (Gramophone)
Alongside Les filles de Cadix, this is Delibes’s most famous song where a musical portrait of the flirtatious Suzon is incorporated into her suitor’s serenade. For this reason it has often crossed the gender barrier—one of its most famous advocates was the Italian soprano Claudia Muzio. The music is written in the castanet-accompanied manner of the south, a prophecy of music to be found in Bizet’s Carmen. Musset’s poem was published in his Oeuvres posthumes (1860) and the composer provided the music a year later. The pendant poem, Adieux à Suzon (she was probably a real girlfriend of the poet in the middle 1840s when Musset visited friends in the Vosges) was set by Georges Bizet in his cycle Feuilles d’album (1866). This is an indication of the friendship between Delibes and Bizet and their mutual admiration.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2006
English: Richard Stokes

Other albums featuring this work

L'invitation au voyage - Mélodies from La belle époque
CDA67523
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