Episode 408. Rachel Yakar, Artiste Lyrique Française

Episode 408. Rachel Yakar, Artiste Lyrique Française

The great French soprano Rachel Yakar died on 24 June 2023 at the age of 87. As she frequently performed opposite our last subject, Swiss tenor Eric Tappy, this episode makes a suitable pendant to that one. Celebrated for her transcendent performances of Baroque music, (Monteverdi and the French Baroque in particular), Yakar was (like previous podcast subjects Eugene Holmes, Oralia Domínguez, Hana Janků, Gwendolyn Killebrew, and Teresa Żylis-Gara) also a member of ensemble of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, with which company she performed for more than 25 years, singing a dizzying range of repertoire, everything from Mélisande to Arabella, Liù to Rusalka, Euridice to Desdemona. She also performed Donna Elvira and the Marschallin at Glyndebourne; and was an unforgettable Poppea in the Ponnelle-Harnoncourt Monteverdi cycle filmed for Unitel. In her prime she was also a frequent visitor to the recording studio, singing everything from Rameau to Varèse, Mozart to Messiaen, with conductors from Harnoncourt to Boulez, Leonhardt to Nagano. She was also a devoted song recitalist and in the later years of her career, she made two recordings of melodies for Virgin Records with the admirable support of her long-term accompanist Claude Lavoix. For the majority of this episode, I have chosen excerpts from both of those recordings, featuring the songs of Fauré and Hahn, which include settings of poets central to their output, including Paul Verlaine, Armand Silvestre, Léconte de Lisle, and Théodore de Banville, supplementing it with additional material in French by Ravel, Lekeu, Clérambault, Messiaen, and Poulenc. Yakar, who, like Régine Crespin and Nadine Denize, studied under the French dramatic soprano Germaine Lubin, was renowned for her faultless technique, her acting prowess, her peerless French diction, and her communicative artistic sensibility, traits of which are all in evidence in all of her recordings from the 1960s through the end of her career in the mid-1990s. Yakar was especially treasured by her colleagues, friends, and students for the warmth and effervescence of her personality, and her devotion to passing on her knowledge and experience to a younger generation of singers. May you delight in the delicacy, humor, precision, and pathos of one of the most prodigiously gifted and versatile vocal artists of her generation.

RECORDINGS HEARD IN THIS EPISODE

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault: Non, non, n’écoutons plus… Courons à  la vengeance (Médée). Rachel Yakar, Reinhard Goebel, Charles Medlam, Alan Curtis [1979]

Guillaume Lekeu: Ronde (Trois Poèmes, V. 82/2). Rachel Yakar, Alice Ader [1994]

Olivier Messiaen: Bonjour toi, colombe verte (Harawi, No. 2). Rachel Yakar, Yvonne Loriod [1988]

Maurice Ravel, Tristan Klingsor: L’indifférent (Shéhérazade, M.41/3). Rachel Yakar, Armin Jordan, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande [1986]

Gabriel Fauré, Armand Silvestre: Aurore, Op. 39/1

Reynaldo Hahn, Charles d’Orléans: Je me metz en vostre mercy

Gabriel Fauré, Victor Hugo: Mai, Op. 1/2

Gabriel Fauré, Sully Prudhomme: Au bord de l’eau, Op. 8/1

Gabriel Fauré, Armand Silvestre: Automne, Op. 18/3

Reynaldo Hahn, Paul Verlaine: Chansons grises

• I. Chanson d’automne
• II. Tous deux
• III. L’allée sans fin
• IV. En sourdine
• V. L’heure exquise
• VI. Paysage triste
• VII. La bonne chanson

Gabriel Fauré, Léconte de Lisle: Les roses d’Ispahan, Op. 34/4

Gabriel Fauré, Armand Silvestre: Fleur jetée, Op. 39/2

Reynaldo Hahn, Paul Verlaine: D’une prison

Gabriel Fauré, Paul Verlaine: Prison, Op. 83/1

Reynaldo Hahn, Théodore de Banville: L’énamourée

Reynaldo Hahn, Paul Verlaine: L’incrédule

Gabriel Fauré, Paul Verlaine: En sourdine (Cinq mélodies de Venise, Op. 58/2)

Gabriel Fauré, Paul Verlaine: Clair de lune, Op. 46/2

Reynaldo Hahn, Théodore de Banville: La nuit

Gabriel Fauré, Albert Samain: Soir, Op. 83/2

Gabriel Fauré, Léconte de Lisle: Nell, Op. 18/1

Francis Poulenc, Georges Bernanos [after Gertrud von Le Fort]: Mes filles, j’ai désiré de tout mon cœur vous sauver (Les Dialogues des Carmélites). Rachel Yakar, Kent Nagano, Orchestre de l’Opéra de Lyon [1992]