Album selection: Sivan Eldar and Cordelia Lynn, Lorraine Campet and Nathanaël Gouin, Lorde, Lizzo, Kristen Noguès and John Surman

• Sivan Eldar and Cordelia Lynn Like Flesh Music by Sivan Eldar. Book by Cordelia Lynn. Directed by Silvia Costa. Helena Rasker (contralto), William Dazeley (baritone), Juliette Allen (soprano), Augustin Muller (computer music production Ircam), Le Balcon (orchestra), Maxime Pascal (conductor).

Everything here comes together to present Like Flesh , the first opera by composer Sivan Eldar (39 years old), in the best possible conditions. A CD inserted in a hardback book with high-quality content and a live recording made during the work's premiere in 2022 at the Lille Opera. A free but edifying update of several episodes from Ovid's Metamorphoses , the plot is rooted in a forest where three people (the Forester, the Woman and the Student) confront each other against a backdrop of feminism and ecology. Both poetic and fantastic, Cordelia Lynn's libretto (in English) cannot leave you indifferent. Her vocal treatment, even less so. Sivan Eldar makes the characters - and the chorus, in reduced numbers - sing like the greatest masters of opera, while her mode of expression is unheard of. Deployed in a sort of constantly moving electronic cloud, his music teems with inventions. William Dazeley's tormented Forester, Helena Rasker's dizzying Woman and Juliette Allen's sublime Student exude such dramatic force that their destiny also becomes that of the listener, transformed at the end of this journey carefully directed by Maxime Pascal. With Like Flesh , Sivan Eldar has delivered an opera with a contemporary influence unparalleled since the beginning of the 21st ^century . Pierre Gervasoni

• Lorraine Campet and Nathanaël Gouin Soulmates Works by Beethoven, Josephine Lang, Schubert and Schumann. With Lorraine Campet (double bass), Nathanaël Gouin (piano).

You have 73.18% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.