Singing French mélodie necessitates the singer to strike a difficult balance between a perfect diction making the text which has been put to music intelligible, as well as getting the right tone of expression, being careful it doesn’t descend into preciosity. Thanks to a certain melodic line, Marc Mauillon is both tenor and baritone: he thus counts an enormous repertoire from the baroque era all the way through to today’s music. This Fauré recital is a veritable delight thanks to all of these combined qualities, to which the French singer adds his clear and touching timbre.
A master of the art of the melody from his beginnings all the way through to his final compositions, Gabriel Fauré did not always put timeless texts to music himself. Beyond his faultless style and a voice perfectly suited to this art, Marc Mauillon (tastefully) discerned the suitable texts to accompany the 31 melodies of this new album dedicated to Fauré. With the help of Anne Le Bozec, who so judiciously supports him on the piano, he has picked works from Victor Hugo (one of Fauré’s real passions), Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Molière as well as more recent literature from Sully Prudhomme, Armand Silvestre, Paul de Choudens and Catulle Mendès. There is nothing obsolete about this album however, just simple and natural singing which unites melody to chanson française. © François Hudry/Qobuz
The poetic renewal embodied by Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine and so many others after them radically changed the musical landscape and propelled French art song into a true golden age. This tribute to Fauré, the supreme master of the mélodie, gains its radiance from Marc Mauillon’s ideally clear voice and Anne Le Bozec’s delicate pianism. The singer’s second ‘solo’ recording on harmonia mundi shows him just as much at home in Faurean word setting as in the text of Lambert’s Leçons de ténèbres! © harmonia mundi