Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Cast your mind back to the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics. Halfway through, amid a futuristic landscape laid out across the vast Stade de France, a grand piano rose vertically out of the floor with a pianist suspended from it and a singer clad in sparkly black walked to the centre of the arena.That was French tenor Benjamin Bernheim. He sang beautifully in Fauré’s “Hymne à Apollon”, a setting of an ancient Delphic hymn discovered in Greece.The release of this new recording of French mélodies is timed to make the most of his newfound celebrity. The Fauré hymn is not included, but there are two major vocal works better-known in versions with orchestra, which are performed here in transcriptions by his piano accompanist, Carrie-Ann Matheson.The first is Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, to which Bernheim brings the fine clarity of enunciation one expects from a native French singer, though his singing keeps breaking into a bigger, operatic scale. The grander scope of Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer suits him better and Matheson’s full, romantic accompaniments recreate orchestrally rich textures. A selection of four Duparc melodies, including “La vie anterieure” and “Phidylé”, also alternate between intimacy and a full-throated outpouring of sound.To end, he offers three popular encores. These 20th-century classics by Brel, Kosma and Trenet are always a delight and Bernheim sings them to the manner born. We could have done with more of those.★★★☆☆‘Douce France’ is released by DG
