When long-dormant operas are awakened, you can, if you listen carefully, still hear the sneer, "There's a reason." But before sniffing at the "exhumations," it helps to remember that such revivals have been the biggest boost to the active repertoire in the history of the art-form, today far more than the making of new operas. It's easy to forget, in this bounty, that in our lifetimes, "Les Troyens" was a rarity, and that if Handel was known for anything but "Messiah," it was for a version of "Julius Caesar" he would hardly have recognized.
If you had asked me �" last year, say �" to list the dozen operas by Camille Saint-Saens, the gayest French composer between Lully and Poulenc, I wouldn't have gotten past "Samson et Dalila." Now, to carry on without his last, "Proserpine," which he thought his best, seems as unthinkable as life without the smartphone or gay marriage.
Appearances to the contrary, Christophe Rousset can't do everything, and a quick review of the terrain shows that when neglected French fare of any vintage has been brought up for a re-tasting, the sommelier has usually been out-landish. Latest up is Ulf Schirmer, leading the Munich Festival Orchestra in a concert "Proserpine" that at least had the sense to go on to a deuxieme at Versailles. The new recording, the latest addition to the indispensible Editions Singulaires (which released Saint-Saens' opera "Les Barbares" two years ago), is from the Munich premiere last October.
Lest you think Saint-Saens' "Proserpine" is another French mythological confection, the only time the title character, a fast-moving "courtesan," mentions her mythological forbear, it's to rave, in a jealous fit, that she's like Proserpina only in that they are two queens without the sun, Prosperina's of the daylight, Proserpine's of love. When it comes to resemblances, librettist Louis Gallet's protagonist is more like Dalila �" or Armide, or Carmen, or Violetta Valery �" pretty much unalloyed femme fatale, having made the mistake, fatal to her, of actually falling in love. Veronique Gens, as fine a singer as performs today and an onstage alchemist with French texts, takes to the role like it was written for her and she'll sing it for the rest of her career �" neither of which is true, but she can make you think that nothing of consequence is happening outside the reach of her smoky if arrestingly true voice.
Saint-Saens wrote the part for the rare French vocal type, the "Falcon" (named after Cornelie Falcon), the singular dramatic-coloratura-mezzo of whom Pauline Viardot-Garcia is the enduring historical exemplar and which gay novelist Alexander Chee brought back to life with both Viardot-Garcia and his own protagonist, Lillie Berne, in last year's spectacular "The Queen of the Night." After the 1887 premiere of "Proserpine," the Falcon became enough of an endangered species that Saint-Saens soprano-ized the part for an 1899 revival, and that's the version, improved in other ways, that Gens sings with raptor intensity, the hood having newly been removed.
Proserpine's rival �" a nun, of course, Angiola, snatched from the cloister �" is the fine Marie-Adeline Henry, most recently of Rousset's Lully "Armide," and she's matched in tonal allure by tenor Frederic Antoun as Sabatino, fated to be ensorcelled by both women. Andrew Foster-Williams is equally fine as Squarocca, the criminal and erstwhile henchman of Prosperine. But none of it would work if Schirmer had not drawn a liquid, fatally perfumed performance from the orchestra and chorus, which to deem merely idiomatic would be a slight. You'd have to be wholly ignorant of "Carmen" not to recall it in the atmospheric third act of "Prosperine," which begins in a gypsy camp in the mountains, where dancing and actual sorcery are underway.
Period pieces
For her part, Gens, whose "Neere" was the most beautiful vocal CD of last year, has followed it up with "Visions" (Alpha), an album of arias written expressly for the Falcon voice, ideally accompanied by the Munich Radio Orchestra (what's gotten into these Muenchners?) under her longtime colleague, Herve Niquet, whose fine feel for period style is the icing on this delectable gateau. The opera arias (and pieces from other genres) here are surely gone forever, but not to hear them now would be an aesthetic crime akin to Proserpine's (murder in 1887, suicide in 1899).
The "visions" are mystical and supernatural ecstasies, French embellishments on mere magic, if with more than a little carnality in all the fervor. There's another delicious slice of Saint-Saens (from "Etienne Marcel"), but nothing you're likely to have heard before. If Lalla-Roukh's lilting song in the Felicien David opera of that name doesn't melt you, you're a hard heart. Gens is as piercing with the fine-grained music as with the grand sentiments, and while she and Niquet are at it, it's this life, not the next one, you're hankering for.