A chamber opera for solo soprano with a cast that includes Santa Claus and Stalin, René-Daniel Dubois’ Ne blâmez jamais les bédouins is the first recorded effort of Chants Libres, a Québécois group dedicated to contemporary opera. Alain Thibault’s remarkable and schizophrenic musical score draws on both Burroughs’s cut-up method and Raymond Queneau’s mathematical wordplay, diftly juggling linear and vertical story lines that soprano Pauline Vaillancourt carves poetry from in her tour-de-force performance. Bracing and original.
