The Canadian contralto
Marie-Nicole Lemieux impressed me mightily
- and not only me - in the Naïve
recording of Vivaldi’s "Orlando
Furioso" and now has an exclusive
contract with this company. The first
fruit of this is this interestingly
planned anthology of songs by French
or French-based composers who - the
booklet notes freely admit - had little
in common except that they were working
at the same time and often setting the
same poets.
From Vivaldi to French
mélodie may seem a far
cry, but with very few exceptions (Gluck
and Berlioz) leading operatic roles
for contraltos are to be found only
in baroque opera, so they have to be
versatile if they want to do both opera
and concert work. Lemieux allows her
voice to vibrate a little more freely
in this repertoire than would be proper
in baroque music and altogether sounds
so completely at home in mélodie
that you would never imagine she could
do Vivaldi as well. That’s what I call
musicianship.
She has a fairly bright
contralto; compared with Nathalie Stutzmann’s
deep sonority she is less obviously
not a mezzo, yet in the melancholy
outpourings of Chausson she too reveals
an impressively rich lower range. Elsewhere
she produces a golden stream of sound
around her higher Ds and E flats that
makes me wonder if she will always remain
a contralto or whether she is heading
to become a mezzo. She sings "Trois
jours de vendange", I note, in
the original key of E flat rather than
the lower voice version which has been
published in D flat, not that the song
goes very high anyway. Still, labels
matter only relatively; the important
thing is that she is very good and that
she uses her voice in a way that seems
true to itself.
Indeed, I have really
very little to add. These are model
performances of melodies and the partnership
with Blumenthal (a regular one) is excellent.
In cases where I had a score to consult
I was able to see that every indication
was scrupulously followed, but with
apparent spontaneity. My only query
is that the five songs by Hahn to texts
by Robert Louis Stevenson would seem
to require a lighter, less sophisticated
approach, but perhaps what I really
mean is that only a light soprano could
suspend our disbelief and convince us
that a little child is singing. I must
say that Hahn doesn’t show the same
exceptional empathy for this poet’s
world as Stanford in the two texts –
"Windy Nights" and "My
Ship and I" – which the two composers
both set. The title of the latter, by
the way, should be "My Ship and
Me". Stanford left it like that;
the fact that Hahn felt he had to correct
the stupid English poet’s grammar shows
what I mean about a lack of empathy.
On the whole I find these the least
valuable items here and I wish some
more Hahn in French had been chosen
instead.
You may have noticed
that, while I am expressing great admiration
for this singer, I am not quite going
overboard either. This is because a
certain something-or-other which makes
a great and thrilling experience, and
which I did find in her Vivaldi, seems
not to be present. Others may disagree,
just as not everybody seems to be as
thrilled by Stutzmann’s mélodie
singing as I am. In any case, excellence
is a rare enough quality in itself and
those interested in the programme, or
who wish to follow the career of a singer
who is likely to be with us for a long
while yet, should not hesitate.
Texts and translations
are provided and there is an excellent
note by Benoît Duteutre. Since
I have had harsh things to say about
translations recently, let me congratulate
Charles Johnston on an English version
which I think I wouldn’t have guessed
was not an original English text.
Christopher Howell
Marie-Nicole Lemieux (contralto) 
