Soprano Mercedes Arcuri will be a member of the cast in “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges”, composed by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette, playing the roles of Le Feu and Le Rossignol. Despite all the time that has passed, one the most important recordings of this work is the album released by Deutsche Grammophon in 1960. The cast was ideal and full of French singers. The leading role, The Child, was played by an exquisite Francoise Ogéas. The great master of French singing, Camille Maurane, who featured in some respectable recordings of Pelléas next to Fournet and Ansermet, played the The Clock and The Cat. Other magnificent appearances are the ones by Jane Barbié (The Shepherdess, The Female Cat, The Squirrel, and A Shepherd) and Michel Senéchal (The Teapot, The Little Frog, and The Arithmetic). Soprano Sylvaine Gilma gave a masterly performance of The Fire and the Princess. A very young Lorin Maazel was conducting the Orchestre Nationale de la R.T.F., achieving a bright, analytical, suggestive, and colourful sonority, which granted the recording a high degree of theatricality. The album is completed with the opera “L’heure espagnole”, by the same composer, recorded in 1965.
