In La Côte-Saint-André, the little-known melodies of Berlioz

The Berlioz Festival, which runs until Sunday, August 31 in La Côte-Saint-André (Isère), the composer's (1803-1869) birthplace, invites visitors this year to discover a little-known aspect of the musician's output with the world premiere performance of his complete melodies. The programming has been entrusted to Thibaut Louppe, conductor of the Spirito choir, a group that will participate, on Tuesday, August 26 and Wednesday, August 27, in the last two of the four concerts devoted to this undertaking, which is both perilous (the same melody was sometimes intended for three different groups) and labyrinthine.

The difficulties of such a reconstruction become apparent from the beginning of the first concert in the series, given on Friday, August 22, in the middle of the afternoon in the church of La Côte-Saint-André. Fleurs des Landes , a collection published in 1850, opens the program. We first discover a romance, Le Matin , beautifully "cooed" by Anne-Lise Polchlopek who then moves on to the very captivating evocation of a Petit oiseau which has already had the honors of the previous melody (same poem). Le Trébuchet , the central piece of this set of five units, involves a duo of singers in the scherzo register.

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