Presentation

20th album of the Ensemble for the Harmonia Mundi label. This new collaboration with mezzo soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac, a long-time accomplice of the ensemble, is placed under the theme of Folly, this emblematic figure of the baroque period.

After having embodied alongside Amarillis, Medea, Dido as well as Marie, in two programmes and discographic releases, Stéphanie metamorphoses this time to incarnate La Folie, which is expressed under the aspects of a thousand-faceted character, excessive as well as extravagant, traversed by the diversity of human passions. It is a question of making madness heard in all its states and all its outbursts in order to better explore its different faces and highlight, under the aegis of baroque composers with very diverse inspirations, the characters associated with it.

DISTINCTIONS

Opéra Magazine - DIAMANT

WHAT THE PRESS SAYS ABOUT IT

Opéra Magazine (July 2nd 2020)
MEHDI MAHDAVI

"Stéphanie d'Oustrac has long since crossed the frontiers of the baroque lands where her exceptional talent has blossomed. She has nevertheless remained faithful to this repertoire, as well as to the ensembles that have accompanied her in the exploration of her different shores, as her collaboration with Amarillis shows".

DISTRIBUTION

AMARILLIS, Artistic Director : Héloïse Gaillard

Héloïse Gaillard / Xavier Miquel : Oboe and flutes

Alice Piérot / Liv Heym : Violin

Josèphe Cottet : Violin and Viola

Laurent Muller : Alto

Laurent Le Chenadec : Bassoon

Ludovic Coutineau : Violin

Violaine Cochard : Harpsichord and Vocal Conductor

Gauthier Broutin : Cello

Roman Falik : Theorbo

& Stéphanie d'Oustrac : Mezzo soprano

What the press says

Forum Opéra { 17juillet 2020 }

The enjoyment of life

"[...] Stéphanie d'Oustrac is La Folie, from the Venetian Festivals of Campra. One dreams of listening to her in the whole prologue, to say the least. The two Carnival arias and La Folie are demonstrations of her art. Those of Purcell, separated by a Ground of Eccles, are surprising for their ability to take us into a very different universe. The musicians led by Héloïse Gaillard show exemplary attention to singing. The instrumental pages are lively and colourful as one could wish for."

Der Theater Verlag { 21septembre 2020 }

Madness with method

Stéphanie d'Oustrac and the Ensemble Amarillis have seldom exhausted the palette of emotions of baroque sound art as opulently as they have

French mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac has dedicated her new album to musical images of madness and insanity. In art as in life, being apart and love are close together. In one of La Fontaine's fables, the personification of madness, which has robbed her counterpart, l'amour, of her sight in a dispute, is condemned by the gods to be forever the leader of the blind.

And so d'Oustrac flatters, sighs, laments and races as an emblematic seductress with a wide range of affects, from black melancholy to madness, from euphoria to delirium. She takes her examples from European baroque music - operas, cantatas, songs - and flutist Héloïse Gaillard contributes the appropriate instrumental pieces with her excellently accompanying Ensemble Amarillis, for example, with the introductory burlesque Sinfonia from Reinhard Keiser's Hamburg Singspiel-Pasticcio "Der lächerliche Printz Jodelet" or with John Eccles' "Ground", in which madness unleashes itself in the endless twist of the ostinato.

d'Oustrac sets the scene with two excerpts from operas by André Campra ...

Facets of Folly

Presentation

What the press says