Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cPicture for yourselves, my dear children, a spacious villa with white walls\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009set in the marvellous surroundings of a wood of eucalyptus, myrtle and laurel trees,\u201d wrote Jules Massenet as he thought back on the composition of his \u201cconte lyrique\u201d Gris\u00e9lidis.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 Gris\u00e9lidis, 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 \u2014 first set down in Boccaccio\u2019s Decameron \u2014 recounts the testing of a wife\u2019s fidelity. This has become a tricky area in today\u2019s moral climate (think of Mozart\u2019s Cos\u00ec fan tutte), though Massenet softens the controversy by making Gris\u00e9lidis 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\u2019s Li\u00f9). 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. Gris\u00e9lidis may be a minor opera, but its music lifts it to a higher emotional level.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2018Jules Massenet: Gris\u00e9lidis\u2019 is released by Bru Zane<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.\u201cPicture for yourselves, my dear children, a spacious villa with white walls\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009set in the marvellous surroundings of a wood of eucalyptus, myrtle and laurel trees,\u201d wrote<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":176231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-176230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176232,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176230\/revisions\/176232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}