Silver: La Belle au bois dormant
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CHARLES SILVER
Silver: La Belle au bois dormant
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungarian National Choir, György Vashegyi, Guylaine Girard, Julien Dran, Kate Aldrich, Thomas Dolié
[ Bru Zane / 2 CD Box Set ]
Release Date: Friday 24 April 2026
This item is only available to us via Special Order. We should be able to get it to you in 3 - 6 weeks from when you order it.
Largely forgotten today, the composer Charles Silver was one of the most promising students of Jules Massenet, whose elegant style and effective dramatic gestures he fully mastered. His opera La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty), based on Perrault's tale, testifies to these skills with its colourful, lively and surprisingly modern music: the influence of Puccini is evident. The libretto enriches the original story with delightful comic touches from the characters of Jacotte and Barnabé, who provide a light-hearted counterpoint to the fairytale plot. Although it enjoyed a successful first run in Marseille in 1902, the opera unfortunately never received a Parisian premiere, which hindered its wider dissemination despite an acclaimed revival at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Accessible, refined and treating a universal theme, this score deserves a second chance that just might - who knows? - earn it a place on the international operatic stage.
"We're used to Palazzetto Bru Zane unearthing forgotten French operas but in most cases we're familiar with their composers: Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Gounod, Lalo etc. But here they unearth an opera by a composer I confess to having no idea existed until an aria popped up on Cyrille Dubois's album 'So Romantique!' (4/23).
Meet Charles Silver, born in Paris (1868) to parents of Russian origin. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1886, studying harmony with Théodore Dubois and composition with Jules Massenet. In 1891 he won the coveted Prix de Rome with the cantata L'interdit. In 1895 at the Villa Medici, where he was staying as part of his Rome prize, Silver began composing his four-act opera - or féerie lyrique - La Belle au bois dormant ('The Sleeping Beauty'), which premiered at the Grand-Théâtre de Marseille in 1902. But then Paris rejected it and the opera fell into a long sleep. As Alexandre Dratwicki wittily points out in his note, La Belle au bois dormant 'has slumbered longer than its heroine', taking nearly 130 years to return to the stage. This premiere recording was made at Müpa Budapest last year. Its release coincides with staged performances at the Opéra de Saint-Étienne, a co-production with Bru Zane." Gramophone
