Massenet | Complete Songs for Voice and Piano
ATMA Classique and Festival Classica presents the largest lyric cycle ever undertaken in Canada: a 13-CD set of the complete mélodies by the prolific French composer Jules Massenet (1842-1912).
This box set comprises a total of 333 songs, including 13 unpublished songs and 31 that have never been recorded.
Jules Massenet Complete Mélodies for voice and piano represents one of the most ambitious projects devoted to French melody in the history of modern recording.
Under the artistic direction of baritone Marc Boucher, the project brings together some of Quebec’s most beautiful voices accompanied by Olivier Godin on an 1854 Érard piano.
- Karina Gauvin, Sophie Naubert, Anna-Sophie Neher, Magali Simard-Galdès | Sopranos
- Julie Boulianne, Michèle Losier | Mezzo-sopranos
- Florence Bourget, Marie-Nicole Lemieux | Contraltos
- Frédéric Antoun, Antoine Bélanger, Antonio Figueroa, Emmanuel Hasler, Joé Lampron-Dandonneau, Éric Laporte | Tenors
- Marc Boucher, Jean-François Lapointe, Hugo Laporte | Baritones
- Jean Marchand, Marie-Ève Pelletier | Narrators
- Antoine Bareil | Violin
- Stéphane Tétreault | Cello
- David Jacques | Guitar
- Valérie Milot | Harp
- Olivier Godin | 1854 Érard Piano, Harmonium, Harpsichord
R. Strauss | Der Rosenkavalier
Multimedia artist André Heller makes his highly anticipated debut as stage director at the Berlin State Opera with Richard Strauss’ tragicomic ‘Rosenkavalier’ and the critics are full of praise:
“With his staging of ‘Rosenkavalier’ André Heller sets a monument to flawlessness” (Die Zeit).
Master conductor Zubin Mehta leads the fantastic orchestra of the Staatskapelle Berlin and a “cast of singers,
above all with Camilla Nylund and Günther Groissböck, which is unsurpassable” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Michèle Losier and Nadine Sierra make their role debuts as Octavian and as Sophie.
A Rosenkavalier production with a dream cast!
One has hardly ever seen a more splendid, elegant and opulent Rosenkavalier.
- Süddeutsche Zeitung
- Staatskapelle Berlin
- Zubin Mehta | Conductor
- André Heller | Director
- Camilla Nylund | Feldmarschallin
- Günther Groissböck | Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau
- Michèle Losier | Octavian
- Roman Trekel | Herr von Faninal
- Nadine Sierra | Sophie
Berlioz | Benvenuto Cellini
Michèle Losier is a terrific Ascanio, stealing the show with her brief appearances.
- Gramophone
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Hector Berlioz’s opera Benvenuto Cellini is ambitious in every sense of the word, and its extreme demands for a full production have long prevented it from being a runaway success.
Until now. The work's combination of romance, excitement, violence, comedy and spectacle proved ideally suited to Terry Gilliam’s stylish, colourful and larger-than-life direction.
First seen in English National Opera's 2014 production, its unique look generated much interest and great acclaim: “ … tremendous gusto … the sheer energy and generous humour of the show are hard to resist …” (The Guardian)
That production was taken up by the Netherlands' De Nationale Opera, and it's from their critically acclaimed 2015 performances that this tremendous new release has been made.
- Conductor - Sir Mark Elder
- Director - Terry Gilliam
- Dutch National Opera Chorus & Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
- Benvenuto Cellini - John Osborn
- Teresa - Mariangela Sicilia
- Balducci - Maurizio Muraro
- Ascanio - Michèle Losier
- Fieramosca - Laurent Naouri
Mozart | La clemenza di Tito
An excellent, scrupulously voiced Annio
- Opera News
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Mozart's final opera returns to Glyndebourne after an absence of nearly 20 years in a 'stark, compelling and very well acted' production directed by Claus Guth.
Richard Croft sings the title role 'with exemplary stylistic poise and tonal sweetness', and Anna Stéphany is a Sesto 'touchingly full of angst and remorse...
with terrific élan and immaculate technical control' in the arias (The Telegraph) - her 'Parto, Parto' 'simply breathtaking' (The Guardian).
Guth's vision sets the 1st-century Roman story in a two-storey office suite bureaucracy 'exquisitely lit by Olaf Winter', aptly framing the scheming of Vitelia, sung by Alice Coote 'in terrific form'.
The OAE under Robin Ticciati 'brings out the sheer beauty' of Mozart's score (Express).
- Conductor - Robin Ticciati
- Director- Claus Guth
- Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
- Tito - Richard Croft
- Sesto - Anna Stéphany
- Vitellia - Alice Coote
- Publio - Clive Bayley
- Annio - Michèle Losier
- Servilia - Joélle Harvey
Mozart | Così fan tutte
A luxurious tone, with radiant high notes.
- ResMusica
The direction of Così fan tutte has been entrusted to the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker who has chosen to embody each of the characters through both a singer and a dancer.
From the preconceived notion of constant and eternal love, the lovers shift progressively towards the more complex realisation that feelings of love are more akin to perpetual motion.
- Conductor - Philippe Jordan
- Director - Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker
- Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus
- Dorabella - Michèle Losier
- Fiordiligi - Jacquelyn Wagner
- Guglielmo - Philippe Sly
- Ferrando - Frédéric Antoun
- Despina - Ginger Costa-Kackson
- Don Alfonso - Paulo Szot
Watch the trailer
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Temps nouveau
Michèle Losier presents her first solo recital on the ATMA Classique label. “I was pregnant with my first child when I chose the songs for this recording. I felt simultaneously calm and overjoyed.
I particularly remember the impression the lullaby Dors ami made on me; it deeply moved my maternal heart,” she says.
Pianist Olivier Godin accompanies her in a program of French melodies by Gounod, Massenet, Franck, Bizet and Saint-Saëns.
Gounod
- 1. Ô ma belle rebelle
- 2. Le Banc de pierre
- 3. Chanson de printemps
- 4. Ma belle amie est morte « Lamento »
- 5. Prière
- 6. Où voulez-vous aller
Massenet
- 7. À la trépassée
- 8. Un adieu
- 9. Dors, ami
- 10. Crépuscule
- 11. Élégie
Franck
- 12. Le Mariage des roses
- 13. Nocturne
- 14. S'il est un charmant gazon
- 15. Lied
- 16. La Procession
Bizet
- 17. Adieux de l'hôtesse arabe
- 18. Après l'hiver
- 19. Absence
- 20. La coccinelle
Saint-Saëns
- 21. Le vent dans la plaine
- 22. Si vous n'avez rien à me dire
- 23. L'attente
- 24. Chanson triste
- 25. Temps nouveau
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Brahms | Chants d'amour
Predictably, though, I was specially delighted by the multifaceted mezzo of Michèle Losier. I found myself repeatedly and pleasantly surprised by Losier's incisive use of text and the depth and nuance of her vocal coloration.
- Opera Obsession
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Kimy Mc Laren, Michèle Losier, Pascal Charbonneau and Alexandre Sylvestre are the vocal soloists on this new recording of two of Brahms’ Romantic song cycles. They are accompanied on piano four-hands by Myriam Farid and Olivier Godin.
Completed in 1869, the first collection of Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op. 52 became a great hit after Brahms and Clara Schumann performed as accompanists at the premiere.
These 18 love songs for mixed vocal quartet and four hands piano pay homage to the city of Vienna. In 1874, Brahms went on to write a sequel, the 15 Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 65.
Generally simple and concise, at times serious or cheerful, dark or luminous, these songs are all waltzes. Not all are for four voices, however; some call for one or two soloists, or contrast one vocalist to the three others.
- Kimy McLaren | Soprano
- Michèle Losier | Mezzo-soprano
- Pascal Charbonneau | Tenor
- Alexandre Sylvestre | Bass baritone
- Myriam Farid | Pianist
- Olivier Godin | Pianist
More details at ATMA Classique
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Berlioz | Roméo et Juliette
On this new Berlioz SACD, the BBC SO and its Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death by offering as you have never heard them: the third symphony, Roméo et Juliette, and excerpts from his largest opera, Les Troyens;
a 'magical revelation... that wrought shivers' (Bachtrack), in which 'one could feel the instant rightness of the sonorous imagery Berlioz devises' (The Sunday Times).
- Sir Andrew Davis | Conductor
- BBC Symphony Orchestra
- Michèle Losier | Mezzo-soprano
- Samuel Boden | Tenor
- David Soar | Bass
More details at Chandos.net
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Gounod | La Colombe
As sung by Québécoise mezzo-soprano Michèle Losier, a more beguiling start to Act One than Mazet’s romance ‘Apaisez, blanche colombe’ is unimaginable.
Possessing a voice of a type ever in short supply, ideal for rôles like Siebel in Gounod’s Faust—also a collaboration with Barbier and Carré—that demand both a measure of thrust and lightness of approach,
Losier sings the romance enchantingly, her perfect placement of nasalized vowels proving that the correct production of these sounds does not require unattractive distortion of the tone.
Losier makes no concerted efforts at sounding masculine, which is to the good as her timbre is so lovely.
- Voix des Arts
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Following his award-winning recording of Donizetii's Les Martyrs, Opera Rara's Music Director Sir Mark Elder turns his attention to another forgotten masterpiece of 19th century French opera, Gounod's delightful two act opera La Colombe.
He is joined by a superb cast led to two of the most talked about and rapidly rising stars stars of the opera world, American soprano Erin Morley and Mexican tenor Javier Camarena.
They are accompanied by Canadian mezzo-soprano Michele Losier, French baritone Laurent Naouri. Plus one dove, and one parrot.
- Conductor - Sir Mark Elder
- Sylvie - Erin Morley
- Horace - Javier Camarena
- Mazet - Michèle Losier
- Maître Jean - Laurent Naouri
- Hallé Orchestra
Offenbach | Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Michèle Losier brings a surprisingly rich mezzo to the trouser role of Niklausse.
- Gramophone
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A unusually dark and sober production of Offenbach's opera where Natalie Dessay performs the role of Antonia, a young, physically fragile woman whose talent, singing, ultimately proves fatal to her.
The automaton Olympia is sung by the charming coloratura soprano Kathleen Kim, while the Venetian courtesan Olympia is embodied by the sensual mezzo-soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya.
Michèle Losier plays the role of the loyal friend, Nicklausse, and Hoffmann's nemesis, who takes the form of four different characters, is incarnated by the French bass-baritone Laurent Naouri, with Hoffmann himself sung by the young American tenor Michael Spyres.
- Conductor - Stéphane Denève
- Stage Director - Laurent Pelly
- Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of the Gran Teatre del Liceu
- Hoffmann - Michael Spyres
- Olympia - Kathleen Kim
- Antonia - Natalie Dessay
- Giulietta - Tatiana Pavlovskaya
- Lindorf / Coppélius / Docteur Miracle / Dapertutto - Laurent Naouri
- Nicklausse / La Muse - Michèle Losier
- Andrès / Cochenille / Frantz / Pitichinaccio - Francisco Vas
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Gounod | Faust
The mezzo-soprano Michele Losier brought a rich voice and impishness to the pants role of Siebel, Faust's student, who loves Marguerite.
- The New York Times
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Double Tony Award winning stage director Desmond McAnuff s production, hailed by the New York Times as rich with ideas and theatrically daring , presents Faust as an atomic scientist inhabiting a dark world shot through with Cold War resonances.
Alongside Kaufmann, a typically gold-standard Met cast includes the phenomenal René Pape as Méphistophélès and the ideally-suited Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite.
Star conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin draws an elegant, darkly textured performance from the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.
- Conductor - Yannick Nézet-Séguin
- Stage Director - Des McAnuff
- The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Chorus and Ballet
- Faust - Jonas Kaufmann
- Marguerite - Marina Poplavskaya
- Méphistophélès - René Pape
- Valentin - Russell Braun
- Siebel - Michèle Losier
- Marthe - Wendy White
- Wagner - Jonathan Beyer
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Duparc | Mélodies
She sings with passion and nuanced intelligence and brings real understanding to her interpretations. Her voice is full and secure through her range, even down to the depths of La vague et la cloche.
- allmusic.com
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Following the success met during the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, Michèle recorded this exquisite recital alongside the great American pianist Daniel Blumenthal. A superb rendition of Duparc's lyrical and exalted songs.
- 1. L'invitation au voyage
- 2. Au pays où se fait la guerre
- 3. Romance de Mignon
- 4. Le galop
- 5. Soupir
- 6. Sérénade
- 7. Chanson triste
- 8. La vague et la cloche
- 9. Élégie
- 10. Le manoir de Rosemonde
- 11. Extase
- 12. Sérénade florentine
- 13. Phidylé
- 14. Lamento
- 15. Testament
- 16. La vie antérieure
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Copyright © Michèle Losier, mezzo-soprano. All rights reserved.