This programme spotlights Gabriel Fauré’s orchestrated songs and his music for the stage, of which his suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande includes some of his best-loved music. Performances of Fauré’s spectacular Wagnerian drama Prométhée are a real rarity, while the eloquent Shylock suite, based on Shakespeare, contains some of his most elaborate symphonic music. Fauré orchestrated only a small number of his more than 100 songs, but these include the transcendentally beautiful love song Les Roses d’Ispahan with its harmonic subtleties and gorgeous coda.

The orchestrated songs and other vocal tracks are performed in her Naxos debut by leading international mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, who has starred in productions at the Opéra de Paris, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Hamburg State Opera, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and just about every other prestigious venue throughout Europe and the US. She was notably successful in a new production of La Cenerentola at the Vienna State Opera for which she was hailed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the ‘New Bel Canto Queen’.

Conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud is a regular guest in leading opera houses in Europe and the US, and his discography includes Sapho recorded at Wexford (Fonè), Werther recorded at Martina Franca (Dynamic), La Voix humaine recorded at Compiègne (DVD) and Rossini’s Le Siège de Corinthe (Naxos 866032930) recorded at Bad Wildbad. Tingaud’s orchestral recordings for Naxos include an acclaimed album of works by Paul Dukas with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (8573296) regarded by Fanfare as being ‘at the head of the pack. We seem to have before our ears a French George Szell in the making. Tingaud’s performance of La Péri would sweep the field’.

Jean-Luc Tingaud studied with the French conductor Manuel Rosenthal. Notable opera engagements have included Pénélope and Le Roi malgré lui (Wexford Festival Opera), Roméo et Juliette (Arena di Verona), Faust (Macerata), The Turn of the Screw (Lille), Dialogues des Carmélites, La Bohème and Madama Butterfly (Pittsburgh), La Fille du régiment (Madrid), Pelléas et Mélisande (Prague National Theatre), Les Pêcheurs de perles (English National Opera), Spontini’s Fernand Cortez (Florence), L’Ange de Nisida (Donizetti Opera festival, Bergamo), Carmen (Tokyo) and Lakmé (Beijing).