French tenor Cyrille Dubois has collected some of the better known Britten works “en français” for this recording. One normally hears these works performed by English singers in what is pretty much an “official” Britten style so I was intrigued to hear them interpreted by a native French speaker, albeit one with a track record of performing Britten’s operas, song cycles and choral works!
The first piece is the early Quatre chansons françaises, performed with orchestra in this case the Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est with David Reiland conducting. The singing here is quite stylish and distinctly French; perhaps a little more emphatic than one is accustomed too but it works. The orchestra copes admirably with the dense and colourful orchestral writing. It includes Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’automne” with the famous opening “Les sanglots longs des violins” though in 1928 the composer could not have known the significance that line would assume later.
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Cherubini’s Médée of 1797 is undergoing something of a revival at the moment albeit in an Italian version. But there’s an earlier and less known version of the same story with a libretto by (as opposed to based on) Corneille. It’s Charpentier’s Médée of 1693. It’s a tragédie lyrique with all the expected elements; an allegorical prologue in praise of Louis XIV, a classical subject, five acts, gods, spirits and demons and lots of spectacular theatrical effects. The Lully formula in fact. 
The latest release in the CD/book series from the Palazetto Bru Zane is Saint-Saëns’s 1893 opéra comique, Phryné, loosely based on an incident in the life of the famous 4th century BCE courtesan. It’s a two-act piece lasting about 65 minutes. The original was given with spoken dialogue, but as so often with this genre, recitatives (here added by André Messager in 1896) have been used in this recording, as they were in most contemporary performances.
