Gustave III, ou le Bal masqué - Oh, vous, par qui ma vie

This is shaping to be a month of pieces that I wanted to post for a long time: this time around, it is the title hero's cavatina from Auber's take on the famous story of Gustave III :). Sung both in praise of the fine arts in the company of which Gustave (tenor) spends his days (the A section) and in remembrance of Amelie, Anckarstroem's wife (the B section), whose lovely image cannot escape the King's mind, the cavatina paints a perfectly warm personality of the monarch with surprising vivacity. The piece is rather unconventionally built around the structure AABACC with the C section being the final coda of the aria. The A section features lovely writing for the strings whose gentle entrances support Gustave's light vocalizing. But it is the more immediate B section that catches one's attention, introducing both a more sombre mood to the piece and the true reason of the young King's obsession with the arts - a desire to forget his beloved. Moreover, this music involves some very difficult singing for the tenor, incorporating both extremes of the voice, so it comes as no surprise that the part was written for the first Arnold of "Guillaume Tell", Adolphe Nourrit, who merits not one but three full arias (one of which, "Veille sibille", I have already uploaded; but the last one is, rather disappointingly, not as enjoyable as either of its' predecessors, in spite of a dramatically more interesting situation). Laurence Dale, in spite of a couple rather uncomfortable high notes, makes for a fully believable Gustave. Hope you'll enjoy :).