En sourdine Laurent Naouri & Frédéric Loiseau

• Gabriel Fauré (18451877 - 1962):
• 1 Ici-bas !, Op. 8 No. 3 03:00
• 2 Les Berceaux, Op. 23 No. 1 04:52
• 3 Chanson d'amour, Op. 27 No. 1 02:49
• 4 En sourdine, Op. 58 No. 2 03:04
• Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963):
• 5 Dernier poème, FP 163 / Carte postale, FP 58 03:54
• Gabriel Fauré:
• 6 Mai, Op. 1 No. 2 02:53
• 7 Prison, Op. 83 No. 1 02:35
• 8 Spleen, Op. 51 No. 3 02:41
• Francis Poulenc:
• 9 Fêtes galantes, FP 122 01:16
• Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918):
• 10 Je tremble en voyant ton visage 01:53
• 11 Le jet d'eau 05:11
• Gabriel Fauré:
• 12 Toujours, Op. 21 No. 2 01:22
• 13 Le secret, Op. 23 No. 3 02:11
• Francis Poulenc:
• 14 Mazurka, FP 145 03:51
• Gabriel Fauré:
• 15 En prière 02:04
• Total Runtime 43:36

Info for En sourdine

We are familiar with the flamboyant baritone Laurent Naouri, a distinguished exponent of the four villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann from Paris to The Metropolitan Opera New York and an unforgettable Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande. But here it is a much more intimate Naouri, the lover of mélodies by Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc, who invites us to a rendezvous: ‘Here is a repertory I’ve been performing for more than thirty years, sometimes not without a certain frustration: for how can you achieve the intimacy suggested by a poem like Baudelaire’s Le Jet d’eau – it almost pillow talk – when the vocal style forces you to “project” the voice? Although classical art song authorises you to sing piano or pianissimo, it’s still inconceivable to whisper in the listener’s ear. To whisper, you need a microphone, and there we leave the world of the mélodie and enter the world of “chanson”, as that term was understood at the beginning of the radio era. I had already been thinking about these questions for a few years when I met the jazz guitarist Frédéric Loiseau. We started off our collaboration with Les Berceaux, a mélodie that Yves Montand had already sung in a “chanson” style. Encouraged by the result, we looked for other songs that we felt could benefit from this intimate treatment.’

Laurent Naouri, baritone
Frederic Loiseau, guitar

Laurent Naouri
studied at the CNIPAL in Marseille and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. His broad repertory includes about forty roles, from the early baroque to contemporary opera.

Among these and most notably are the Four Vilains (The Tales of Hoffmann) in Paris, New York, Madrid, Orange, Zurich, Milano, Barcelona and Munich, Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande) in Paris, Glasgow, Salzburg, Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Aix en Provence, Count Almaviva (Le Nozze di Figaro) in Aix-en-Provence and Tokyo, the title role of Falstaff in Lyon, Santa Fe and Glyndebourne, Pandolfe (Cendrillon) in Barcelona, Sharpless (Madama Butterfly) at the New York Metropolitan Opera, Fieramosca (Benvenuto Cellini) in Amsterdam, Méphistophélès (La Damnation de Faust) at the Opéra de Lyon and with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as well as the Marquis de la Force (Dialogue des Carmélites) at the Bayerische Staatsoper of Munich, Germont (La Traviata) in Santa Fe, Tokyo and Dallas.

More recently, he has sung the role of Ruprecht in Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel and Mamma Agata (Viva la Mammà) at the Opéra de Lyon, Somarone (Béatrice et Bénédict) and Vautrin in the premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Trompe la Mort at the Opera de Paris, Capulet (Roméo et Juliette), the parts of the Four Vilains (The Tales of Hoffmann), Pandolfe (Cendrillon) and The Grand Prêtre (Samson et Dalila)at the Met, Don Gaspar (L'Ange de Nesida) at the London Royal Opera House, The Grand Prêtre (Samson et Dalila), Germont (Traviata) at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Mamma Agata (Viva la Mammà) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande) in Helsinki in the revival of the Katie Mitchell’s production, Sharpless (Madama Butterfly) at the Opera National de Paris.

He also sings in Recital with Natalie Dessay and Maciej Pikulski in a repertoire of French Songs.

He will sing the Four Vilains (Les Contes d'Hoffmann), King Ignace (Yvonne de Bourgogne), Thoas (Iphigénie en Tauride) at the Paris National Opera, Tomsky (the Queen of Spades) and the title role of Saint-Saens’s Henry VIII in Brussels, Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette in Dallas. Capulet (Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette) and Pandolfe (Cendrillon) at the New York Metropolitan Opera...

Booklet for En sourdine