Day 160
Boeildieu overture to Jean de Paris
Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
Howard Griffiths
As I have been staying in Rouen for a few days it seems right that I make this by including some music by its most famous musical son Boeildieu. I've know La dame blanche since university days and I have great affection for the piece. Over the years I heard a few more of his overtures and his harp concerto but this overture was new to me. I'd have liked to have heard the complete opera but there were many other things going on and I had to make do with just the overture.
This overture (1812) is a lightweight but charming piece. It seems to be a bridge between the world of Haydn and that of Rossini - indeed if you heard it cold you may well think it was an early piece of Rossini though it doesn't yet have an extended crescendo section. I enjoyed it a lot and it made we want to listen to some more of the composer's work. Incidentally there were a number of places where this performance differed from the published score - there was quite a lot of added percussion which to my way of thinking rather spoilt the charm of the piece. But there are so many issues with authentic texts of operas of this period that there may well be authentic variants of the score.
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