Messager: Fortunio

Opera 22

Messager: Fortunio

Soloists

Chorus and orchestra of L'Opéra de Lyon

John Eliot Gardiner

Messager was an important figure in French musical life at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century. He was much admired as a composer who kept refreshing his approach as tastes in lighter operas developed but also was much in demand as a conductor both in France and abroad (including the UK). Most famously he conducted the first performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

I’ve always enjoyed his music - last year I included his Les P’tites Michu as one of the highlights of my year’s listening.  https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/01/messager-les-ptites-michu.html.  I had come across this opera in Susan Graham’s lovely collection of extracts from French Operetta but this was the first time that I had heard the full opera.  It is a lovely piece. Messager brings such an elegance and sophistication to all of his work and the opera is full of the most beautiful solos and ensembles. The more vigorous parts of the score are perhaps a tad conventional but overall this was a work of the highest quality. With much French music of this period the distinction between ‘serious’ and ‘light’ opera almost disappears. Any composer of the time would have been proud to have written it.