Les Nuits D Ete/Pelleas Et Mel

The Dutch soprano Elly Ameling (b. 1933) had a long career before retiring from the concert stage in 1995. She sang art song and concert works, but rarely opera. It has been said of her extended discography that she "never made a bad record." Ameling had a beautifully fluid and light voice and sang with deep expressiveness. She remains too little known.

Ameling specialized in French song, and her performance of Berlioz' "Les Nuits d'Ete" is outstanding. Ameling is accompanied by Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a recording that dates from 1986.

Berlioz' Les Nuits d'Ete consists of six romantically-charged settings of poetry by the French romantic writer Theophile Gautier on themes of love and loss. The works vary greatly in mood. The outer two songs, "Villanelle" and L'Ilse inconnue" are graceful and uptempo.The third, fourth, and fifth songs, "Sur les Lagunes", "Absence" and "Au Cimetiere" are slow, intense, and deeply sad on themes of the death of or separation from the beloved. The second song, Le Spectre de la rose" is a sentimental song in the voice of a rose who remembers her placement on the bosom of a lovely young woman.

Berlioz' songs have complex vocal lines with many twists and turns. Ameling makes the most of them. For example, she offers a lovely performance of "The Specter of the Rose", the highlight of the set, and sings with passion the concluding refrain from the lament "On the Lagoons" : " Ah! Without Love to go over the sea!" Ameling's diction and interpretations of this music are a joy. Robert Shaw provides excellent support with Berlioz' masterful orchestration, shown, for, example, in the orchestral introduction to "The Specter of the Rose" with the opening cello solo.

The CD also includes Gabriel Faure's incidental orchestral music to Maeterlink's play "Pelleas et Melisande". Many late 19th and early 20th Century composers were fascinated with this play, and it was set, most famously, by Debussy's opera, and by Sibelius and Schoenberg as well. Faure wrote a series of nine pieces for the play and later selected four pieces for the suite that is recorded here. Unlike Berlioz, Faure disliked orchestration, and he was assisted in Pelleas et Melisande by Charles Kochelin. Faure's score is elegant, mysterious, and reserved.The most celebrated part of the suite is the third movement, "Sicilenne", with its gentle sadness and its duet for flute and harp over muted strings. The suite also includes an opening prelude, set romantically in a dark and foreboding forest, a short spinning song, and a final somber movement which tells of the impending death of Melisande.

This CD is short, with a duration under 50 minutes, but it sells at a low price. Elly Ameling's singing Berlioz is itself enough to make this CD worth having. Her performance is among the best of the many superb performances available on CD of Berlioz' charged score.

Robin Friedman

I had heard many great things about Elly Ameling and of her interpretive skills but had never heard a recording of hers until I purchased this CD. An old friend of mine always used to say that Ameling's voice was not very beautiful but that she was an amazing interpreter. After purchasing this CD I would have to disagree with him on the former assessment and totally agree with him on the later. I find her voice to be very beautiful almost like a perfected Beverly Sills whose voice I have never been too crazy about. I own many Les Nuits d'Été recordings but only with mezzos like Crespin. It is wonderful to hear this song cycle with a "lighter" voice. It is also seems to have won a 1985 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance.

So many good Nuits d'Ete, but, still, Elly Amling (and Shaw) are by far and away my favorite. I should (and could) give a more technically based opinion, but these pieces are about feeling, nowhere in my 77 years of life more movingly created than on this disc.