Cinq-Mars

r e l e a s e m ay 2016
– ES1024 –
Collection French
opera
Charles Gounod
Cinq-Mars
Mathias Vidal : Le Marquis de Cinq-Mars
Véronique Gens : La Princesse Marie de Gonzague
Tassis Christoyannis : Le Conseiller de Thou
Andrew Foster-Williams : Le Père Joseph
André Heyboer : Le Vicomte de Fontrailles
Norma Nahoun : Marion Delorme
Marie Lenormand : Ninon de L’Enclos, Un Berger
Jacques-Greg Belobo : Le Roi, Le Chancelier
Andrew Lepri Meyer : De Montmort,
L’Ambassadeur
Matthias Ettmayr : De Montrésor, Eustache
Wolfgang Klose : De Brienne
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Münchner Rundfunkorchester
Ulf Schirmer, cond.
1 book + 2 CDs – total time: 76’49 + 61’28
Book: hard cover, 144 pages, size 13,5 cm x 21,00 cm, French and English
Limited and numbered edition of 4000
Contents of t he book (FR & EN)
Gérard Condé, Une redécouverte absolue
Sébastien Troester, Les différentes versions de ‘Cinq-Mars’
Un monsieur de l’orchestre, Bruits de couloirs
Johannès Weber, Un témoignage de la création
Alfred de Vigny, La mort de Cinq-Mars
Synopsis
Alfred de Vigny’s Cinq-Mars, published in 1826, is
regarded as the first great historical novel in French.
The action is set in the seventeenth century: the
Marquis de Cinq-Mars gains the esteem of King
Louis XIII by organising a movement of opposition to
Cardinal Richelieu. But manipulations, betrayals and
plots force the monarch to abandon his champion and
allow Richelieu to triumph and condemn Cinq-Mars
and his friend De Thou to death. It was at the request
of the director of the Opéra-Comique Léon Carvalho,
attracted by the idea of a musical setting of the novel,
that Gounod agreed to return to the forefront of the
operatic scene in 1877, after an absence of ten years.
He produced a work that renounces none of the
musical charms of Roméo et Juliette or Faust, but tends
very clearly in the direction of historical grand opéra.
Indeed, the second version of the piece, revised for
the Opéra de Lyon, transforms the spoken dialogue
into recitatives in order to enhance the fluidity of the
discourse and the noble tone of the action. It is this
final version of the opera that is presented here in a
recording of its first production in modern times.
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