This fifth season of the Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de musique romantique française gives us an opportunity to present further discoveries in the French Romantic repertoire, thanks to the confidence of our loyal partners in this venture.
The 2013 – 2014 season will see two thematic cycles, devoted to the composers Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) and Félicien David (1810-1876). These eminent representatives of the Romantic movement were contemporaries, but their revival requires in each case a very different approach. Indeed, Alkan has long been known to specialists and his works have been widely recorded by specialised labels, but paradoxically little of his music is to be heard in concert. As for Félicien David, he has hitherto been quite simply overlooked by musicians and musicologists. Throughout the season, we shall therefore be confirming the genius of Alkan, notably through comparisons with Liszt and Chopin, while persuading audiences of the talent of Félicien David, as reflected in his very colourful works, including the epic Herculanum. We shall also be looking at Romantic French opera in its many facets: comic verve in Halévy’s Le Dilettante d’Avignon and David’s Le Saphir, Eastern settings in Lecocq’s Ali-Baba and Grétry’s La Caravane du Caire, violent drama in Les Barbares by Saint-Saëns and Les Danaïdes by Salieri, fantastic imagination in Félicien David’s Herculanum, and a visionary language in Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
The Palazzetto Bru Zane is now in a position to present a first selection of its rediscoveries, the fruits of the past four years’ experience, through recordings in the ‘Opéra français’, ‘Prix de Rome’ and (soon) ‘Portraits’ series, and new concert projects, including the Palazzetto Bru Zane Festival in Paris, at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord.