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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
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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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