Somehow I'd missed the notices of Denise Duval's death - Francis Poulenc's muse during the last 10+ years of his life. Here they are - Poulenc introducing an extract from Les Mamelles de Teresias
no subtitles I'm afraid but very much worth it for those two performing together! I don't think (despite the youtube comments) that Poulenc does too badly with some singing(!) especially as he's coping with some exciting piano writing. If you want for the end you'll get as the next video the two performing extracts from the "Dialogues des Carmélites" and "Voix Humaine." Two great artists! Here's the Guardian obituary:
“For me, Duval was the Garbo of opera with a wild touch of vaudeville,” Rorem wrote. “She had clarity, intelligence, diction, beauty – with those eyes the size of eagle eggs.” For his part, Poulenc said of his muse: “This girl is pure sunlight.”
We've just returned from a walking holiday in the Dordogne. As so often in the past few years one arranged by Inntravel. We made the trip to Beaulieu by train with a stop in Paris overnight and a few tourist sights and then after a dinner at the Velouté in Beaulieu awoke to this view of the Dordogne. The photo album for the week is mostly uploaded and accessible here. The trail followed, mostly, the pilgrim trail from Rocamadour to Santiago de Compostela - though in the reverse direction! Hopefully further accounts of the individual days will follow!
There's a few mentions of the composer Francis Poulenc in my entries on this walk but I hadn't realised that he wrote his clandestine cantata Figure Humaine whilst staying in Beaulieu - he rented a two room apartment here containing a poor piano during 1943 whilst setting poems by Paul Eluard with the final hymn to Liberty.
After a discussion on Poulenc's Gloria in the midst of last night's piano lesson (Uttoxeter Choral Society and Sandbach Voices are performing it next week), I spent this morning with Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias
Written in the midst of the occupation of France in the 1940's Poulenc sets words of Guillaume Apollaire. This YouTube clip is from the first act. It gets madder - here's the wikipedia summary of part of act two:
The curtain rises to cries of "Papa!" The husband's project has been a spectacular success, and he has given birth to 40,049 children in a single day. A visiting Parisian journalist asks how he can afford to feed the brood, but the husband explains that the children have all been very successful in careers in the arts, and have made him a rich man with their earnings. After chasing the journalist off, the husband decides to raise a journalist of his own, but is not completely pleased with the results.
..and ends with a call for the audience to go and produce children:
Ecoutez, ô Français, les leçons de la guerre
Et faites des enfants, vous qui n'en faisiez guère
Cher public: faites des enfants!
I was introduced to this piece in the 1970's - at Cambridge - where a theatre group performed this with Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale. I went to see it twice - in part because it was so enjoyable partly because on the first visit I ended up sitting behind a tourist couple who thought they were here to see the Cambridge Footlights and were somewhat surprised at what they were served up with! They were rather restless so I got a far better chance the next night with various of the performers appearing from among the audience. On the Footlights connection - could Monty Python have appeared without some of these surreal pieces of French humour - I'm also thinking of Zazie. There appear to be quite a few film clips from various performances of this work on youTube.
Probably not suitable watching for International Women's day later this week!
For those running short on Christmas ideas here's Poluenc's delicious setting in one of his Songs for Children 'Nous voulons une petite soeur'
The mother tries to tempt her many daughters with exciting present ideas - including a steam hippopotamus - but it always comes down to them wanting another sister (or two!). The tone is a bit harsh in this performance but it is a wonderful rendition!
The death has just been announced of Hugues Cuénod at the age of 108. He was part of the original cast of Stravinsky's Rake's Progress in 1951, he sang in Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf in 1928 (the French premiere). I posted him singing Poulenc's C last year but this seems a good opportunity to repeat that post.
There's a good long gap before the song starts (c 25 sec) but it is worth waiting for - one of my favourite Poulenc songs!
J'ai traversé les Ponts-de-Cé C'est là que tout a commencé
a lament on the fall of France in 1940, written and first performed to an audience including German military during that war. I'll add a link to an obituary when there is one (but in view of his age I guess there's lots prepared) - and here's the Guardian's obit.
