This is the reissue of the first recording, unavailable for years, of French coloratura Elizabeth Vidal, who topped the French music charts in 2014 with a pop-classical album, 'La Cantadora'. 'Romances et Chants d'Oiseaux' features melodies composed for coloratura soprano by Debussy, Saint-Saëns, David, Benedict, Beydts, Longas and Rosenthal.
Naive have brought together works by French composers (or composers living in France) who were born between 1810 and 1910. All of them had, amongst others, a talent for bringing out the qualities of the light coloratura soprano voice.
From Félicien David (1810-1876) to Manuel Rosenthal (b. 1904), Camille Saint-Saëns and Louis Beydts, they all played at transforming ethereal voices to everyone’s delight.
This programme brings to light hitherto unpublished or rare items: Saint-Saëns’s 'La libellule', a mélodie composed in 1894 for Sybil Sanderson, which had never been recorded; Manuel Rosenthal’s 'Trois précieuse's, of which this is the world première recording; Federico Longas’s 'Le rossignol et l’Empereur', which had not been recorded or sung since its first performance in 1937 by Lily Pons; and Louis Beydts’s 'Chansons pour les oiseaux', last recorded in the 1960s by Janine Micheau.