As the recording of Djamileh with an all-French cast made up of Marie-Ange Todorovitch, Jean-Luc Maurette and François Le Roux will not be available on Qobuz, the listener will be "reduced" to listening to some no-less Francophone versions, including the one by Lucia Popp, Jean-Philippe Lafont and Franco Bonisoli conducted by Gardelli; and this new version by the Poznan Philharmonic. That said, this line-up, bringing together the American tenor Eric Barry, an equally-American mezzo, Jennyfer Feinstein, and British baritone George Mosley, has (rather regrettably) a, shall we say, somewhat unusual take on French pronunciation. But after all, the action is meant to take place in Egypt, and so why not sing French in an English accent... The recording misses out the dialogues – Djamileh is a comic opera, and so has a great deal of dialogue – which isn't necessarily a loss, although it means that the plot (fairly weak, it must be said, but not weaker than that of many bel canto Italian operas which have made it big on the world lyrical stage) is no longer comprehensible. Either way, Bizet's score is a delight from the first note to the last. This 1872 work, whose language is looking resolutely ahead (towards Ravel and orientalism) rather than at its contemporaries like Gounod &c., with a stunning harmony and powerfully original ideas and a memorable theme: it's classic Bizet! It's a work which we can recommend without qualification, including to directors of operas who feel in need of some imaginative assistance. After all, one of their illustrious forebears loved it: Gustav Mahler introduced it in Hamburg and then in Vienna, and conducted it with his own baton! © SM/Qobuz