Paradise and the Peri / Philippe Jordan

Isn't it fortunate for us that Schumann didn't have one with opera? How many lieder, expressions of his sensitivity and poetic affinities, were thus born in place of the conventions of theater? Le Paradis et la Péri, a miracle of Schumannian atypicality, is a secular oratorio, even if the term seems ill-suited to express the dazzling visions of angels, elves, and paradise lost that inspire this hour and forty minutes of music. Dreamlike music and...