Recording of the Week, Florian Sempey sings of medieval knights and legends

After his 2022 debut solo album of music by Rossini, French baritone Florian Sempey has returned with a programme built around one of his childhood passions: the medieval world of knights, fortresses, swords, and adventures. His maternal grandmother came from a long line of blacksmiths in Périgord, and Sempey leans on this lineage, drawing many parallels between the "resplendent metal" of the album's title and the metallic shining of the "forging" of his voice.

For his Rossini album Sempey presented popular favourites from The Barber of Seville and L'italiana in Algeri alongside more obscure arias from operas such as La scala di seta and L'occasione fa il ladro, and here he takes this to extremes: excerpts from Orff's Carmina Burana, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and Wagner's Tannhäuser sit alongside selections from Grétry's Richard Cœur-de-lion and Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, plus some operas that I must admit I had never even heard of before, including Meyerbeer's Le pardon de Ploërmel (the original version of Dinorah) and a work by contemporary composer Romain Dumas, Les mirifiques aventures du Chevalier d'Eon.

The latter item, an aria entitled 'De Bourgogne je suis un fruit', comes from an as-yet-unstaged opera written in 2019 and based on the historical figure of Charles d’Éon de Beaumont during the reign of Louis XV. A brief but acrobatic piece that reminded me of Méphistophélès's 'Golden Calf' aria from Gounod's Faust (another composer represented here, albeit in an aria not from Faust but from Roméo et Juliette), it allows Sempey to show off further the vocal dexterity that he had already demonstrated so proficiently in his Rossini album.

In the booklet notes Sempey mentions the dedication and hard work that he has put in to expand the range of what he could do beyond Rossini, and the evidence of that here is ample: the ease at the top of the register is still very much present (not just in the aforementioned Dumas aria but also particularly in 'Estuans interius' from Carmina Burana), while there is now an added richness that serves him incredibly well. As soon as he begins the Grétry piece that opens the album, it's immediately clear that this is a more mature, commanding voice, and his mellifluous account of Wolfram's 'O du mein holder Abendstern' from Tannhäuser is a pleasure to listen to, making me hope that the full role will feature in his on-stage future.

These vocal items are punctuated by the occasional orchestral interlude, including something else that was new to me: the Prelude to Act Three of Vincent d'Indy's opera, Fervaal. Brooding and evocative, the Wagnerian-tinged extract is a tremendous piece, full of inventive orchestration (including contrabass clarinet and an assortment of bugles and saxhorns).

When it comes to operatic knights, it is to be expected that Lohengrin should make an appearance, and indeed he concludes the album. Of course Wagner's knight is a tenor rather than a baritone, and so the excerpt offered here is another orchestral one: the Prelude from Act One. Initially I had wondered whether it might be odd to end with an overture, but actually in context it works magnificently, acting as a contemplative summation of everything we have just heard. Again the orchestral playing is exemplary, not least the ethereal, shimmering sound of the string section of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine under conductor Victor Jacob.

From the cover art designed by Séverine Pineaux, a medieval specialist who actually lives in the Forest of Brocéliande where the Meyerbeer opera is set, to the promotional video featuring various shots of Sempey forging and wielding his mighty sword through some castle ruins, there can be no doubt that he has absolutely committed to this as a concept even beyond the music. As for the performance itself, it's an enormously impressive, highly thoughtful selection that displays the imposing extent of Sempey's prodigious instrument.