Suzanne Balguerie

[1] André Tubeuf writes: "Her Ariane is that of a prodigious singer who masters the impossible equation of making the words [...] all the more intelligible, luminescent even as the range warms up and lights up too"[2] and Jean-Charles Hoffelé: "It should not be forgotten that the absolute Ariade was Suzanne Balguerie, trained at the Gluckist school for whom the word is everything".

She played Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, the countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Tosca and Mélisande.

As with Ariane, it was a triumph: "Madame Balguerie, feline, passionate, a sorceress... with a prodigious voice, is the Wagnerian Isolde herself".

On 21 March 1919, in the bookshop of Adrienne Monnier rue de l'Odéon, she sang a sneak preview of Satie's Socrate, accompanied at the piano by the composer, in front of an audience including Gide, Claudel, Derain, Braque, Picasso, Cocteau, Francis Jammes, and the musicians of Les Six.

[6] The same year, Adrien Rougier dedicated two of his Trois mélodies sur des poèmes d’Albert Samain, pour soprano et piano to her.

In 1927, Balguerie premiered Léo Sachs[9] Les Burgraves at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées which she then revived at the Opéra Garnier.

In 1932, she premiered Alfred Bachelet's Un jardin sur l'Oronte, and, in 1934, Georges Martin Witkowski's La Princesse lointaine, with a libretto by Edmond Rostand.

At recitals, she performed cycles such as Fauré's La Bonne Chanson, and also classical and contemporary melodies.

For the Polydor label, Balguerie recorded excerpts from Iphigénie en Tauride, Alceste, Tannhäuser, The Flying Dutchman, Aïda, Sigurd, Faust and Fidélio.

For Columbia, excerpts from Alceste and Ariane et Barbe Bleue, as well as Le Poème de la maison (1918), a cantata by Georges-Martin Witkowski.

On CD, she can be heard in music from Ariane, Alceste and Iphigénie en Tauride in the box set Les introuvables du chant français (EMI 585828-2).