Véronique Gens, Sandrine Piau and Julien Chauvin - Rivales (2022) [Hi-Res]

Sandrine Piau and Véronique Gens have a longstanding rapport and dreamed of making a recording together. Here they pay tribute to two singers who, like them, were born within a year of each other, Mme Dugazon (1755-1821) and Mme Saint-Huberty (1756-1812): both enjoyed triumphant careers in Paris, inspiring numerous librettists and composers. Gluck even nicknamed Saint-Huberty "Madame-la-Ressource", while "a Dugazon" became a generic name for the roles of naïve girls in love, and later of comical mothers.

Rivals? They very likely were, given the quarrelsome spirit of the operatic world of the time, even if they never crossed paths on stage. Intermingling airs and duets, Piau and Gens here play the heroines of Gluck, Grétry, Monsigny, J. C. Bach, Piccinni, Edelmann and Cherubini. Developed in collaboration with the Centre de Musique baroque de Versailles, this programme on the cusp between Classicism and pre-Romanticism is very much the heart of the repertory championed by Julien Chauvin’s Le Concert de la Loge.