Nicolai Gedda

Nicolai Gedda, tenor
Rousseau – Le Devin du Village
Orchestre de Chambre Louis de Froment, Louis de Froment
     Nicolai Gedda, tenor (Colin)
Janine Micheau, soprano (Colette)
Michel Roux, bass (Le Devin)
Choeurs Raymond Saint-Paul

Mediafire link for Rousseau – Le Devin du Village – de Froment (1956)

(This is a zip file – left click the link, download the file, then unzip when downloaded)

Columbia 33CX 1503
Matrices XPTX 394 21, 395 21 (M6 176329/30)
Recorded April 1956
Issued February 1958

Rousseau is better known as a philosopher, but fancied himself as something of a musician, and his “Le Devin du Village” was extremely influential in its day. It was later parodied by Mozart in “Bastien und Bastienne.” Rousseau was a proponent of Italian operatic style as exemplified by Pergolesi’s “La serva padrona,” and wrote articles supporting the Italian as opposed to the French style espoused by Rameau. Rousseau’s own amateur attempt at opera, though hugely popular at the time, sounds somewhat trite and pedestrian now, though it is given as good a performance as one could hope for in the recording below. Gedda is perhaps too strong for the role of Colin sometimes.

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