Berioz: Cantatas: Herminie, La Mort de Sardanapale, La Mort d'Orphee

"An excellent concept to group Berlioz's Prix de Rome Cantatas on one CD. The native French singers all do justice to these difficult sustained declamations written to fit the academic requirements of France's top music composition competition. French soprano Michele Lagrange is dramatic and passionate in the "lyric scene" Herminie (1828). Beatrice Uria-Monzon brings a colourful, plush mezzo to La Mort de Cleopatre (1829). French tenor Daniel Galvez Vallejo applies a cloudy but powerful voice to the "monologue and bacchanale" La Mort d'Orphee (1827) and to the surviving 5-minute fragment of the cantata La Mort de Sardanaple (1830)... The Orchestre National de Lille plays with requisite detail and drama."
-- Philip Anson, La Scena Musicale, March 4, 2004

"Berlioz attempted four times to win the Prix de Rome...putting them together on one disc for the Berlioz bi-centennial was a smart idea. Casadesus is a stylistically authentic accompanist."
-- T. Hashimoto, San Francisco Examiner

"It is a brilliant idea of Naxos to put his four submissions [for the Prix de Rome] together on one CD, excellently played by the Lille Orchestra under Jean-Claude Casadesus."
- Sunday Tribune (Dublin), 14/9/03

"Berlioz's youthful Cantatas are brimful with wild passion and energy that shaped his larger-than-life adventures in his early days as struggling composer. Jean-Claude Casadesus and dramatic soprano Michele Lagrange give a suitably full blooded account of Herminie, a winning performance packed with raw emotions."
- Music Week, 7/19/03