Aimons, rêvons

As prolific as it is little-known, Georges Bizet’s art song output – his mélodies – deserves to be re-evaluated and given its rightful place in the repertoire. Who could doubt that the composer of ‘Je crois entendre encore’ (‘Romance de Nadir’ from Les Pêcheurs de perles) and the ‘Seguedilla’ (from Carmen) had an extraordinary feeling for melody? The tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen, accompanied by Anthony Romaniuk, reveals some of these gems – settings of texts by Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, amongst others – while presenting pieces by Bizet’s contemporaries: after the first, very successful mélodies of Hector Berlioz, the French art song genre was coming into its own at that time.