Berlioz: Le Nuits d'été / Harold en Italie

Internationally acclaimed "baritenor" Michael Spyres commands parts for high tenor as well as baritone with the same fulminance and nonchalance - in both registers he has "the operatic world at his feet," Gramophone Magazine raved. For Berlioz's collection of art songs Les Nuits d'été, the exceptional singer now makes use of his entire range and presents himself for the first time also in the bass; this makes the recording a unique one worldwide. The melancholy love lament appears on the album Berlioz: Les Nuits d'été & Harold en Italie, recorded by the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg under the direction of John Nelson. The eighty-year-old American conductor John Nelson is considered one of the most important interpreters of Berlioz's œuvre. With this new album, he adds two more works to his award-winning Berlioz cycle: in addition to Les Nuits d'été (in the orchestral version from 1856), the symphony for viola Harold en Italie. Berlioz had written it on commission from the devil's violinist Paganini. Unlike what the latter had ordered, however, Berlioz did not write a virtuoso showpiece; he declared the viola to be a "melancholy dreamer in the sense of Byron's poetry." The romantic indulgence is interpreted by "the uncannily talented Timothy Ridout, recently voted among the BBC's New Generation Artists" (The Times, 2021).