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On 16^th February, 2015, the renowned Polish tenor, Piotr Beczala will release, at international level, his new album. In fact, the lyric theatre lovers recently had reasons to be happy: two recital-albums, with an exclusively French repertoire, is indeed something special. Last week, the French tenor Roberto Alagna released his album, My Life is an Opera, and this week, the The French Collection album, signed by Piotr Beczala and the National Orchestra of Lyon, conducted by Alain Altinoglu. The album contains arias composed by Jules Massenet, Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Francois Adrien Boieldieu, Georges Bizet, and also Giuseppe Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti, with their versions in French.

The French Collection

It is an album which was included in the Vote for the best classical album of 2015 campaign; it contains the albums you can listen to and grade whithin the competition. There you can also see the video material which accompanies the release of this album: and I find it extremely relevant the way in which a French conductor praises a Polish tenor for his way of interpreting French music. Yes, for every performer who sings in French it represents a special challenge: because there are so many types of pronounciation which are specific to this language and give flavour to the speech. It is very easy to tell who is a native speaker of French and who is not; and Beczala seems to have been born in France, although he was born 48 years ago in a small village in the south of Poland.

The French Collection is the first recital-album of the tenor Piotr Beczala which contains opera arias. In 2013, Beczala was the protagonist of another recital-album, but with a repertoire of an operetta - Heart's Delight, which enjoyed a considerable amount of successful sales.

Piotr Beczala

In fact, it is obvious why Piotr Beczala is so successful: a beautiful voice, expressive, which allows him to approach a diverse and broad repertoire - if we were to count the tenor's most known roles. Talent for acting and, in general, a special charisma - so much so that some of the greatest stages of the world already had Piotr Beczala as a guest. He is very successful at the Metropolitan Opera in New York - in February 2015, he will perform there an entire series of concerts; he did not enjoy the same success at the La Scala Opera House in Milano, where he decided never to come back; but I find debatable the audience's attitude at the premiere of Verdi's La Traviata, the performance when Beczala was booed.

Piotr Beczala: one of the most beautiful voices of our times, winner of the title The Best Performer of the Year 2014 at the Echo Awards Ceremony, in love with the French repertoire which dominates the roles he chooses. The French Collection is a real success: beyond the technical aspects - the choice of repertoire, the performance - this record manages to evoke a special emotion and I think that, after all, for the audience this is the most important aspect.