MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Regine Crespin - In Recital

The larger-than-life Régine Crespin, made only one song recital record for Decca, of music by Schumann, Wolf, Debussy and Poulenc. This is the first time the entire recital has been made available on CD.

As her career progressed, Crespin became associated with certain roles - Kundry, Sieglinde, Brünnhilde, Tosca, the Marschallin - but she was prodigiously versatile, thanks to her years in the French provinces. An intelligent singer who understood how to make the texts count, Crespin also had tremendous success in non-operatic repertory. Her 1963 Decca recording with conductor Ernest Ansermet, of Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été and Ravel's Shéhérazade, is regarded as among the best available.

In its original French, her candid and entertaining autobiography is called La vie et l'amour d'une femme, which is also the French translation of Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben. Indeed, Lieder by Schumann and Wolf were important parts of her recital repertory, and she brought the same depth of meaning to their German texts as she did to her Wagnerian roles. Of course French, being her native language, evoked a most immediate and intimate response from this singer.