Arthur Honegger and Jacques Ibert happily shared composition credits for L’Aiglon, though they were cagey about exactly how they divvied it up – perhaps both realised this stirring and often jolly little opera wasn’t a masterpiece. “The Eaglet” was Napoleon Bonaparte’s son, brought up in exile in Austria, and a reminiscence on his brief life was, in 1937, something to make French hearts beat a little faster. This recording, taken from concerts in Montreal a year ago, is its first since the 1950s. It benefits from both a French-speaking cast and the playing of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, who sound energised by Kent Nagano’s conducting, especially in the quasi-mad scene on the Wagram plain. Marc Barrard is good as the gruff old retainer, and the bright steel in Anne-Catherine Gillet’s voice makes her as convincing in the title role as she can be given that she’s playing a 20-year-old man.
