Offenbach: Fables de la Fontaine (CD) – Karine Deshayes

Composer: Jacques Offenbach
Artists: Karine Deshayes, Orchestre de l’Opera de Rouen Normandie
Conductor: Jean-Pierre Haeck
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Alpha
CD Release Date: October 11, 2019

A grasshopper, a milkmaid’s pail, a shepherd, a fox, a country mouse, a cobbler... These are just some of the diverse and varied characters from the famous Fables that Jacques Offenbach set to music in 1842, some 150 years after they were written by Jean de La Fontaine. With vivid texts featuring talking animals and stock characters, the Fables offered an allegorical and didactic way of alluding to the court and the mores of the time. Here, conductor Jean-Pierre Haeck presents them in his own orchestration performed by the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen and mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes, who excels in this repertory. To complete the program, the singer performs numbers from Offenbach’s opéra-bouffe Boule-de-neige, and the orchestra plays movements from the ballet Le Papillon, offering listeners a recording as refined as it is witty.

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