Mixed Media

CD of the Month

Le Dieu Bleu

Thanks to Darius Milhaud, Le Train Bleu keeps a’rolling on CD. But hardly anyone knows Le Dieu Bleu, likewise premiered by the Ballets Russes. Will the live recording by the project orchestra Les Frivolités Parisiennes change that? Even at its premiere in 1912, despite Nijinsky's participation, the one-act opera did not achieve the success that Sergei Diaghilev had hoped for from his Parisian exoticism program à la Schéhérazade and Cléopâtre.

This may have been due to the unimaginative libretto by Jean Cocteau and Federico de Madrazo y Ochoa, and to the music, which lacks the thrilling drive of a Rimsky-Korsakov. It was written by Reynaldo Hahn, a French composer of German descent, who is remembered primarily as the occasional lover and lifelong friend of Marcel Proust. Admired as a "salon singer," he also developed a flair for song-like sounds and dazzling orchestral colors, which, thanks to Dylan Corlay's sensitive conducting, have a sensual and seductive character. Anyone who feels like dreaming about a ballet is in good hands here — it doesn't necessarily have to be the story of Mata Hari, who once tried in vain to make it big again as a Hindu deity in this piece.

Hartmut Regitz

Reynaldo Hahn: Le Dieu bleu, Les Frivolités Parisiennes, Conductor: Dylan Corlay; www.b-records.fr