DEBUSSY Chansons de Bilitis.1 Fêtes galantes.1 Noël des enfants.1 L’enfant prodigue: Air de Lia. DUPARC L’invitation au voyage. Phidylé. RAVEL Shéhérazade. 5 Greek Folk Songs. Chants hébraïques. 4 Folk Songs1 • Victoria de los Angeles (sop); Georges Prêtre, cond;1 Paris Conservatory O; Gonzalo Soriano (pn)1 • EMI 45824 (72:27 &)

Victoria de los Angeles was one of those elite singers to whom the phrase, “the art that conceals art” could be applied. Some of that effect, to be sure, was probably the result of her “pure,” almost unsensuous upper range, which gave her performances an air of simplicity, sometimes, even innocence. The orchestral part of the collection was recorded in 1963 when she was close to her best form. A little hardness of the top notes (not harshness, it should be said) had set in by 1966, when she collaborated with Gonzalo Soriano, but her voice still suited the material so well that it complemented her apt projection of the texts. All of these performances previously appeared on CD as part of a four-disc set titled “The Fabulous Victoria de los Angeles” (EMI 65061). If it’s still out there, I enthusiastically commend it to the attention of those of her admirers who may have missed it.

For those whose focus is on this particular repertoire, she has much to offer, but the competition in some of the pieces is brutal. For me, the least satisfactory performances are those of the two Duparc songs, music dripping with a sophisticated sensuality that her more “innocent” sound can barely suggest, for all her usual attentiveness to the texts. She projects the sense of rapture that the first song in Shéhérazade calls for, and her cool restraint pays dividends in the other two songs, especially “L’indifférent.” Unfortunately (for her), there are a lot of extremely good performances of this song cycle: the Ansermet-conducted ones (Danco 1 and 2; Crespin), Von Otter/Boulez, and Ameling/de Waart, just for starters. On the other hand, her voice seems to fit the Greek Folk Songs and Four Folk Songs so well that I can hardly imagine them being sung by anyone else. She also holds her own in the atmospheric Debussy songs, even with competition by such specialists as Suzanne Danco and Gérard Souzay. To be sure, even this collection, vividly recorded though it is, cannot capture the gracious way she engaged her public at a live recital, but there’s enough here to suggest why she was one of the most beloved singers in the world for a quarter of a century. Texts and translations are provided.

FANFARE: James Miller