Ballade de Villon à s'Amye

“False beauty, for whom I pay so great a price,” baritone Edward Nelson sings to open “Ballade de Villon à s’Amye,” a song rich with anguish and its own withered beauty.

Edward shares: “With the writing and immediate success of his opera Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, Debussy was busy with commissions and large-scale projects. Then, in 1910, after a long hiatus from writing songs, he wrote the most character-filled cycle of his career. For me, they show a composer who has become extremely nuanced in how he wants to portray a character.”

Selection from Trois ballades de François Villon (1910). All three songs featured in the Atrium Sessions.