Alberic Magnard - Guercoeur (Plasson) [2012]

1-1 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Introduction 	
1-2 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Le Temps N'Est Plus - (Ombres, Choeur, Guercoeur) 	
1-3 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Est-ce Toi, Frère... (L'Ombre D'Une Vierge, L'Ombre D'Une Femme, Guercoeur) 	
1-4 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Nul Ne Comprend Mon Supplice (Guercoeur, L'Ombre D'un Poète) 	
1-5 	Ah! Malgré Toi, Poète - Jose Van Dam/Orchestre Du Capitole de Toulouse/Michel Plasson 	
1-6 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Gloire A Toi, Mère Divine ! (Ombres, Choeur, Vérité, Guercoeur, Beauté, Bonté, Souffrance) 	
1-7 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Quelle Plainte A Retenti ? (Ombres, Choeur, Vérité, Guercoeur, Beauté, Bonté, Souffrance) 	
1-8 	Guercoeur - Acte I: Loin de Moi, Doute de L'infini (Ombres, Choeur, Vérité, Guercoeur, Beauté, Bonté, Soufrance) 	
1-9 	Guercoeur - Acte I: A Moi, Forces de la Nature (Vérité) 	
1-10 	Guercoeur - Acte I : Jardins D'azur (Vérité) - Le Temps N'est Plus, L'espace N'est Plus (Ombres, Choeur, Bonté, Souffrance) 	

2-1 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Interlude 	
2-2 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Où Suis-je? (Guercoeur) 	
2-3 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Hélas! Vais-je Répandre la Terreur... ? (Guercoeur, Illusions D'amour, Illusions de Gloire, Choeur) 	
2-4 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Interlude 	
2-5 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Giselle, la Douceur de Reposer Près de Toi (Heurtal, Giselle) 	
2-6 	Guercoeur - Acte Ii: Paix Aux Morts... (Heurtal, Choeur, Giselle) 	
2-7 	Guercoeur - Acte Ii: J'ai Peur Aussi, Heurtal! (Giselle, Heurtal) 	
2-8 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Cher Heurtal (Giselle) 	
2-9 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Sois Bientôt de Retour, Heurtal! (Giselle, Guercoeur) 	
2-10 	Parjure! 	
2-11 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Ah! Ne Me Quitte Pas Ainsi (Giselle, Guercoeur) 	
2-12 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Si Cruelle! Si Touchante! (Giselle, Guercoeur) 	
2-13 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Un Homme Ici! (Heurtal, Guercoeur) 	
2-14 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Disparu... (Heurtal, Giselle) 	
2-15 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Interlude 	

3-1 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Du Pain! Du Pain! (Choeur) 	
3-2 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Malheureux Peuple (Guercoeur) 	
3-3 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Damnation! (Choeur, Heurtal, Guercoeur) 	
3-4 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Prodige! (Choeur, Heurtal, Guercoeur) 	
3-5 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Vive Heurtal! (Choeur) 	
3-6 	Guercoeur - Acte II: Vérité, Pardonne à Mon Orgueil (Guercoeur, Choeur) 	
3-7 	Guercoeur - Acte III: Prélude 	
3-8 	Guercoeur - Acte III : Mère, Entends Monter Vers Toi (Bonté, Choeur) 	
3-9 	Guercoeur - Acte III: L'âme D'un Juste... (Bonté, Choeur) 	
3-10 	Guercoeur - Acte III: Il Revient, Trahi Dans Son Amour (Bonté) 	
3-11 	Guercoeur - Acte III: Mère, Vois L'orgueilleux Qui Déserta Le Ciel! (Souffrance, Guercoeur, Beauté, Vérité, Choeur) 	
3-12 	Louange A Vous 	
3-13 	Guercoeur - Acte III: Bien, Mon Fils! (Souffrance, Guercoeur, Beauté, Vérité, Choeur) 	
3-14 	Guercoeur - Acte III: Mon Règne, Hélas! (Souffrance, Guercoeur, Beauté, Vérité, Choeur) 
3-15 	Guercoeur - Acte III: Oublie à Jamais L'angoisse Passagère! (Souffrance, Guercoeur, Beauté, Vérité, Choeur) 

Hildegard Behrens (Soprano) - Truth
Anne Salvan (Soprano) - Goodness
Nadine Denize (Mezzo Soprano) - Giselle
Gary Lakes (Tenor) - Heurtal
José van Dam (Bass Baritone) - Guercoeur
Nathalie Stutzmann (Contralto) - Suffering
Isabelle Manent (Soprano) - Shade of a Girl
Michèle Lagrange (Soprano) - Beauty
Helene Jossoud (Mezzo Soprano) - Shade of a Woman
Jean-Luc Viala (Tenor) - Shade of a Poet

Orfeón Donostiarra (Choir)
Orchestre Du Capitol De Toulouse
Michel Plasson - conductor

Magnard's three operas, for which he wrote the libretti, are hymns to disconnection and loss. The heroine of Yolande (1888-1891) dies of happiness as her husband returns from a crusade. In Bérénice (1905-1909), the marriage of Emperor Titus to his beloved, the Jewish queen Bérénice, must be set aside when the violent objections of the Roman mob render it politically impossible. The exploration of disillusionment swells to grandiose, obsessive proportions in Guercoeur, which occupied Magnard from 1897 to 1901. His mother's suicide when he was four affected him his entire life, while the death of his father left him bedeviled by a host of unresolved conflicts expressively telling in the Chant funèbre and Ouverture (both 1895). Magnard's biographer, Gaston Carraud, relates that Francis Magnard once accosted his son with "Ah! Forgotten men -- if, a few generations, indeed, a few years after your death, you were to return to this world, you would hasten back to your graves so as not to see your reputations tarnished, your memories wiped out, your foresight deceived in your friends, your underlings and, worse still, in your heirs!" This happens in Guercoeur, whose eponymous hero disturbs Heaven's wan hymnody with the demand to live again. Returned to the living in Act II, he finds that his wife now belongs to his former disciple, who is declaring himself dictator of a willing people for whom Guercoeur's ideal of liberty had proven an onerous burden. Denouncing the resurrected Guercoeur as an impostor, they rush and kill him. In the final act a chastened Guercoeur returns to heaven to be rocked into oblivion by one of the pinnacles of Magnard's art, the quartet of feminine deities, Truth, Suffering, Goodness, and Beauty, "Oublié à jamais l'angoisse passagère." The flanking acts in heaven leave the central act looming as an opera sandwiched between two oratorios, which partially accounts for Guercoeur's failure to take hold, though the music of heaven possesses an attenuated grandeur demarcated by great solemn fanfares, while the compelling action of Act II is met with some of Magnard's most stirring, vivid, dramatically impelled work. Act III was heard at the Nancy Conservatoire on February 23, 1908; Act I at a Colonne Concert on December 18, 1910, though the work as a whole achieved a premiere at the Paris Opéra only in 1931 -- on April 24 -- with orchestration of the first and last acts by Ropartz owing to the loss of Magnard's scoring when invading Germans burned down his house in 1914. ---Adrian Corleonis, allmusic.com

Magnard, for those that know him (and for some unknown reason that is too few) he has been called all of the above - or in the case of Mahler, a composer who at least "predicted" him. A Frenchman (son of François Magnard, a bestselling author and editor of Le Figaro) who fell in love with Wagner after a visit to Bayreuth (which caused him to give up law to study music). He studied four years with Vincent d'Indy, began to lose his hearing in his latter years and died having been burned to death alone in his house after shooting and killing two German soldiers during WW1. Magnard, a composer of a "Wagnerian" opera that ends not in redemption but failure and the knowledge that humanity can only be "redeemed" as whole - and only once they all truly seek it.

There is so much one might say about Magnard (and the curious reader can find out more by following the links below) But why not listen to some of his music below and decide whether he is worth pursuing? ---the-wagnerian.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

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