« Amours » – Gaëlle Arquez, mezzo-soprano, and Jérémie Rhorer

Love, always love… Whether in the expression of Cherubino’s first emotions in The Marriage of Figaro or in the bewitching seductions of Carmen and Dalila, love remains at the heart of the operatic stage. Alongside Jérémie Rhorer and the Cercle de l’Harmonie, Gaëlle Arquez embodies the characters of Orpheus and Alceste in turn, addressing the infernal divinities and confronting the fearsome “Dance of the Furies”.

In the compositions of Gluck, Mozart and Bizet, love is often tumultuous! La Favorite, the story of a novice monk who falls in love with the favourite of the King of Spain, and Thaïs, in which a promiscuous woman shakes the faith of a hermit, are also striking examples, as is the overture to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a fairytale imbroglio of affairs of the heart inspired by William Shakespeare.

In this programme, Gaëlle Arquez, Jérémie Rhorer and Le Cercle de l’Harmonie explore all the twists and turns of amorous passion, from Cherubino’s passionate awakening to Orpheus’s pain, from Alceste’s sacrifice to the sensual wiles of Dalila and Carmen, not forgetting Léonore’s conflict between honour and sentiment. A fascinating portrait of love and its different faces through some of opera’s most beautiful arias.

Distribution

Le Cercle de l’Harmonie / Conductor : Jérémie Rhorer