Emmanuel Villaume - Massenet: Chérubin (2006)

Dynamic, which has already published in CD and DVD other neglected Massenet works, now has the pleasure to offer music lovers another rarity, this Chérubin recorded live in Cagliari in the fall of last year. The old Mozartian Cherubino of Le nozze di Figaro is no longer the young lad in his first naive contacts with women: his age moved on from 13 to 17 years and, of course, takes on more adolescent connotations. Massenet brings these aspects out well as he characterises Chérubin with vocal scoring that favours ample, intensely cantabile phrases, with leaps towards the acute register that give full vent to the lyrical soprano voice, with moments of sudden emphasis and equally rapid disappointments - a real tempest of hormones, light years away from the Voi che sapete of Mozart’s page boy. The orchestration, too, is noteworthy (not so grandiose as usual, lighter and more attentive to detail), some eighteenth-century echoes, various Mozart references, and Italian but especially Spanish accents which ”colour” the score at several points.