Ballade que Villon feit à la requeste de sa mère pour prier Nostre Dame

In his final offering from Debussy’s Trois ballades de François Villon (1910), baritone Edward Nelson sings lines from the reflective "Ballade que Villon feit à la requeste de sa mère pour prier Nostre Dame:” In my parish church I see / A painted paradise with harps and lutes / And a hell where the damned are boiled: One fills me with fright, the other with joy and bliss."

“Song is a very personal thing for a classical singer,” says the native Californian. “There are many opera singers that avoid it at all costs. The vulnerability required of stripping a performance of all its bells and whistles can be very intimidating. [But] in song, a singer gets to paint with every vocal color in their arsenal.”