Various Artists - Le Ballet Imaginaire - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Giselle is based on a legend according to which the ghosts of unmarried girls return to seek revenge on the living. The Wilis had already been described in a story in Heinrich Heine's de l'Allemagne, although Heine received no credit for Giselle. The immediate inspiration for the ballet came from Théophile Gautier, spurred by his infatuation with the dancer Carlotta Grisi. Elements from Victor Hugo were to be incorporated in a libretto that was realized by the writer Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges in three days, while Adam took a week to sketch the music and three to complete it, making some use of earlier material. The choreography was devised by the Paris Opéra ballet-master Jean Coralli, with Giselle's dances choreographed by Carlotta Grisi's teacher and lover Jules Perrot. Designs were by Pierre Ciceri, who had also designed the sets for La Sylphide. The ballet was first produced on 18th June 1841 at the Opéra, the Théâtre de l'Académie royale de musique, when Grisi danced Giselle, Lucien Petipa Albrecht and Adèle Dumilâtre the Queen of the Wilis, Myrthe. Various changes have been made in the ballet since 1841, not least in a number of versions given in Russia, with an early re-staging there by Perrot with Fanny Elssler, a rival Giselle, and Marius Petipa. The latter later made his own choreographic contribution to the ballet in later productions. The score includes interpolated scenes by Friedrich Burgmüller, who is best known for the peasant pas de deux in Act I of Giselle.

Los Angeles punk quartet The Paranoyds channel revelry and revulsion into their debut album Carnage Bargain-a raucous blend of garage rock grit, new wave swagger, horror film soundtrack campiness, and a myriad of other influences. The Paranoyds' beginnings can be traced back to a friendship forged between Staz Lindes and Laila Hashemi in their teens. With the additions of Lexi Funston and David Ruiz, the band found the personnel for their sonic balance of jubilant energy and foreboding undercurrents. Carnage Bargain captures this chemistry through guitar-and-keyboard, genre-mashing weirdness on InchLaundry,Inch the fever-dream kitsch of B-52s on InchRatboy,Inch krautrock's motorik groove on InchHungry SamInch, and Blondie on the sweet-and-salty highlight InchCourtney.Inch Title track InchCarnage BargainInch is a perfect example of the band delivering scathing lyrical observations under the guise of a quirky pop hook. The notion of rejecting the status quo and creating your own destiny is evident on the lead single InchGirlfriend Degree,Inch which the band calls an ode to Inchbeing a badass woman who's taking time to make sure she's doing things for herself.Inch The band may be paranoid, but they offer a solution to our modern ills through the act of being an inspiring, independent, and unflappable force.

The brilliant soprano María Cristina Kiehr, together with lutenist-vihuelist Ariel Abramovich, presents her first solo album devoted to Renaissance music. With her broad experience in sixteenth-century polyphonic repertoire, and a project almost completely using her native language, Kiehr brings to the music of Spain's Golden Age her own unique perspective. Imaginario reconstructs an imaginary and unknown book of vihuela songs, inspired by the seven marvelous books published between 1536 and 1576, but this time as if published in Valladolid or Seville between 1570 and 1580. Constructed in the shadow of the earlier books, each one of it's songs makes reference either in it's music or text to another song from those earlier books. The vihuelist Jacob Heringman, together with whom Abramovich created and recorded Cifras imaginaries, is also part of this project, together with the mythical British tenor John Potter, ex Hilliard Ensemble and ECM artist, who performs an enigmatic piece for tenor and vihuela. A unique project, in every sense of the word, this stretch of the imagination takes the recorded repertory of the Spanish Renaissance one step further, venturing into the world of musical fiction based on a blend of creativity and science, and with a team of researchers difficult to surpass.