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.“Picture for yourselves, my dear children, a spacious villa with white walls . . . set in the marvellous surroundings of a wood of eucalyptus, myrtle and laurel trees,” wrote Jules Massenet as he thought back on the composition of his “conte lyrique” Grisélidis.Under the Mediterranean sun he devised a light-hearted confection, part courtly love, part saturnine comedy, part glorification of medieval Provence. The audience at the Paris premiere in 1901 loved it, but the opera has failed to hold on to its early popularity.This is not the first recording of Grisélidis, but Palazzetto Bru Zane, a cultural institution devoted to rediscovering French opera rarities, has done the opera proud. Performed by the Orchestre national Montpellier Occitanie, this recording is very well cast and played, and the packaging is typically handsome.The story — first set down in Boccaccio’s Decameron — recounts the testing of a wife’s fidelity. This has become a tricky area in today’s moral climate (think of Mozart’s Così fan tutte), though Massenet softens the controversy by making Grisélidis a paragon of virtue and her tempter a feebly comic Devil.The best of the music comes out of the loving relationship of wife and husband, especially their parting duet and her subsequent aria of longing for him (like a dry run for Puccini’s Liù). These are vintage, romantic Massenet, though there is also pleasure to be had from the light comedy and his co-opting of a sanctified medieval atmosphere for background colour. Grisélidis may be a minor opera, but its music lifts it to a higher emotional level.★★★★☆‘Jules Massenet: Grisélidis’ is released by Bru Zane
