Stéphane
Degout

Cédric Tiberghien, Alexis Descharmes, Matteo Cesari

ODE TO A LOST PARADISE

‘Singing pleases my soul. Dance, for me, is almost as sweet as a kiss. Let your steps be slow, let them imitate the attitudes of pleasure and the abandon of sensual delight...’ Ravel based his songs on a collection of the same name by Évariste de Parny, a poet who adapted Madagascan folk songs into French. These Chansons describe, in language that is kept deliberately simple, the fascinating landscapes of a faraway land and the goodness of their inhabitants, while cursing the drastic ravages of colonisation. The Chansons madécasses were conceived as chamber music in which the voice would be the principal instrument and Ravel uses the potential inherent in the text to produce a moment of sensual poetic incantation – a sensuality ideally suited to Stéphane Degout’s radiant voice. Degout’s talents in this field have been acclaimed many times at La Monnaie. ‘Can one die from sensual delight?’

PROGRAMME

• Francis Poulenc (Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire)
  - Le Bestiaire (Le Dromadaire, La Chèvre du Thibet, La Sauterelle, Le Dauphin, L’Écrevisse, La Carpe)
  - Montparnasse
  - Hyde Park
  - Calligrammes (L’Espionne, Mutation, Vers le Sud, Il pleut, La Grâce exilée, Aussi bien que les cigales, Voyage)
  - Quatre poèmes (L’Anguille, Carte-Postale, Avant le Cinéma, 1904)
  - Banalités (Chanson d’Orkenise, Hôtel, Fagnes de Wallonie, Voyage à Paris, Sanglots)
• Kaija Saariaho Trio for flute, cello and piano
• Maurice Ravel Chansons Madécasses (poems by Évariste Parny)
  (Nahandove, Aoua !, Il est doux)
• Histoires Naturelles (texts by Jules Renard)
  (Le Paon, le Grillon, le Cygne, le Martin-pêcheur, la Pintade)