Sally Silver - La vie d'une rose: Songs by Jules Massenet (2019)

SOMM Recordings is honoured to release the last recording made by the much-loved and admired soprano Sally Silver before her death at the age of 51 in 2018. Silvers third release on SOMM, La vie dune rose returns to the evocatively perfumed songs of Jules Massenet following 2015s well-received Les amoureuses sont des folles. Accompanied again by the renowned conductor-pianist Richard Bonynge who also provides a moving, specially written tribute she is joined by the mezzo-soprano Christine Tocci on six duets. The 25 (of Massenets 285) mélodies heard here offer a marked contrast to the familiar image of the composers famed operatic credentials. As Massenet expert Hervé Oléon says in his authoritative booklet notes: Massenet, the song composer, was, in his own words, rather more at home in salons this bourgeois artist at the fireside as he liked to describe himself. Embracing a multitude of emotions, sacred and profane, these songs employ wide-ranging forms and a broad musical palette to always captivating ends while also revealing a composer perpetually developing, keen to experiment and looking towards the future.