‘ La Chanson d’Eve’
‘Innocence, Decay and Transcendence’

A recital of song built around Gabriel Fauré’s enigmatic late cycle ‘La Chanson d’Eve’ whose narrative describes Eve’s awakening on the first morning of the world to her longing to return to her original state of innocence and unknowing in Paradise , the ‘île d’oubli’.
Following the overt lyricism and opulent textures, abundant in his earlier Mélodie, Fauré, in ‘Chanson d’Eve’ creates a heightened sense of purity and simplicity, using a consciously developed austerity with both his vocal and piano writing. This echoes his chosen text of the Belgian poet Van Lerberghe’s, ‘La Chanson d’Eve’, who had stated that he used a vocabulary “out of the simplest elements of language” carefully weighing his words to create “a luminous, fluid, ethereal verse.”

Karen Radcliffe Mezzo Soprano
Michael Bell Piano

FREE

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