Offenbach: Pomme d'Api & Sur un volcan
Magali Léger (soprano), Florian Laconi (tenor), Marc Barrard (baritone), Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens
Pomme d’Api is a gem, Offenbach unstinting with the melodies he lavished on this slight tale…Easing herself into both women’s roles [Léger’s] tone softens and she gets the measure of Offenbach’s...
Offenbach: Pomme d'Api & Sur un volcan
Magali Léger (soprano), Florian Laconi (tenor), Marc Barrard (baritone), Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens
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Pomme d’Api is a gem, Offenbach unstinting with the melodies he lavished on this slight tale…Easing herself into both women’s roles [Léger’s] tone softens and she gets the measure of Offenbach’s...
About
An absolute highlight rounds off the Offenbach Year 2019: two one-act operettas presented in historical performance practice by renowned soloists and the Kölner Akademie on instruments from the epoch. Trafalgar sur un volcan is set in Dublin during the Napoleonic period, while the action of Pomme dapi, it too with its love triangle, takes place in the household of the retiree Rabastens in Paris. He forces his nephew Gustave to renounce his beloved Catherine, nicknamed »Pomme dApi« (Little Red Apple), a bride beneath his social class. Gustave pretends to agree to this arrangement, but a little later is surprised to find her as the unsuspecting Rabastens new housekeeper. In other words, this too is a ménage à trois that will not last in the long run. Both works are full of witty arias, duets, and trios and rise to the absolute heights of Offenbachs melodic genius, which is magnificently revealed in his brilliant instrumentations!
Contents and tracklist
- Magali Léger (soprano), Florian Laconi (tenor), Marc Barrard (baritone)
- Kölner Akademie
- Michael Alexander Willens
- Florian Laconi (tenor), Marc Barrard (baritone), Magali Léger (soprano)
- Kölner Akademie
- Michael Alexander Willens
Awards and reviews
June 2020
Pomme d’Api is a gem, Offenbach unstinting with the melodies he lavished on this slight tale…Easing herself into both women’s roles [Léger’s] tone softens and she gets the measure of Offenbach’s endlessly varied vocal lines. However, it’s the conductor Michael Alexander Willens who wins the laurels for rescuing Sur un volcan from the archives ad conducting both operas with unabashed brio.
June 2020
Under Michael Alexander Willens’s impeccable direction, the Kölner Akademie’s playing is light and bright...it’s disappointing that both singing and dialogue hang fire...The singers are more convincing in [Sur un Volcan].
Opera Now April 2020
partnered by Pomme d’Api … the duet for soprano and tenor and the second trio are excellent.