Nuit d’été by Various, Od (2020/2020), Dirigent John Eliot Gardiner, Basilique, Saint-Denis-en-Val, France

Pauline Viardot is at the heart of this program offered at the opening of the Festival by Sir John Elliot Gardiner. Indispensable figure of the 19th century European musical life, familiar with French composers of his time including Berlioz and Fauré, she was, at the request of Brahms, the first interpreter of the Rhapsody for contralto in 1870. At the head of the Revolutionary Orchestra and Romantic and the Monteverdi Choir, Sir John Eliot Gardiner invites us to an evening exceptional where Stéphane Degout - artist lyrical of the year at the Victoires de la Musique 2019 - now essential in Fauré's Requiem, shares Les Nuits d'été by Berlioz with one of the great mezzo-sopranos current, Ann Hallenberg who interprets the Rhapsody for Viola by Brahms, sung for the first time in the Basilica.