"My requiem was composed for nothing....for pleasure, if I may say so...", these were the words of Gabriel Fauré when he talked about his Requiem, undoubtedly one of his best-known and most frequently performed scores. The idea of pleasure may seem incongruous in the context of a mass for the dead, but the musician envisaged it as a deliverance, almost a moment of bliss, at least spiritual. And this is perhaps the secret of its success even today, in this warm and luxuriant sound material that leads to the elevation of the spirit. Throughout his career, Gounod composed nearly twenty sacred works, most of them in the form of a mass or oratorio. The one known as Messe de Clovis is almost contemporary to Fauré's Requiem but in a completely different spirit. Here the musician returns to the neo-renaissance writing already present in earlier pieces. A 'historicising' style, certainly, but one that Gounod practised with mastery.

COPRODUCTION Théâtre des Champs-Elysées / Palazzetto Bru Zane / Le Concert Spirituel