Thank you for starting this thread.

I have a few favorite songs from Faure, Debussy, Poulenc -- but I think most people who are familiar with and interested in the French repertoire know about them. I'd just like to point out a book by a fascinating scholar, Katherine Bergeron. It's entitled Voice Lessons, and deals with the mélodie around 1900.

Projected release date: Spring 2008. Oh well, thought it was out by now...

If this thread is still around then, I'll notify youall.

Hector Berlioz Melodies; Orchestre De L'Opera De Lyon. conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. Radio-France-Erato Disques in 1990.

Artists: Diane Montague, Catherine Robbin, Brigitte Fournier, Howard Crook & Gilles Cachemaille:

Le jeune patre breton, La Captive, Le Chasseur danois, Zaide and La belle voyageuse

Nuits D'ete - shared by the above cast, instead of one singer.   The notes say that Berlioz indicated different voices for several of the songs.  Le spectre de la rose, lowered in pitch from D to B, was designated "contralto".   For Sur les lagunes - now in F minor, not G minor - a baritone was preferred, with the optional alternative of contralto or mezzo.   Au cimetiere simply specified "tenor", without optional alternative.  Only 3 of the 6 songs - Villanelle, Absence and L'ile inconnue - retained the original "mezzo-soprano or tenor".

My preference remains with Regine Crespin, on Decca, but my ears also appreciate the contrast and  variety from different performers.

Duparc does it for me every time, it is one of the great musical tragedies that virtually nothing from the last 50 (!) years of his life was not destroyed by him. I gave a class yesterday on Phidyle, which is my own favourite, although L'invitation au voyage and Extase come close. I must reacquaint myself with Testament - it doesn't get done anywhere near as often as some of the others - ditto La vague et la cloche with its rather Edgar Allan Poe like text. Remembering Mart's love of Saint-Saens (!) here's a nugget of useless information: the Jean Lahor who wrote the text for Chanson triste was one and the same person as Henri Cazalis who wrote the poem Danse Macabre, set by Camille first as a song and then expanded into the famous orchestral miniature. And speaking of short orchestral pieces, there's a lovely one by Duparc called Aux etoiles, delicately Wagnerian if that isn't an oxymoron...

Berlioz - I'm with Stanley on Crespin for Nuits d'ete, although my all-time favourite Berlioz song recording is April Cantelo and Viola Tunnard performing La mort d'Ophelie.

Faure - Mirages and L'horizon chimerique - two wonderful short cycles, which, like so much late Faure, are both achingly beautiful, almost painfully so, and frustratingly elusive. I know Le jardin clos and Chanson d'Eve less well but suspect they are of the same high quality. (Again, slightly off-topic, but do listen to the String Quartet if you respond to this style.)

And finally (for the moment) - Bernac singing Poulenc's C is one of my Desert Island choices (and what a touching poem it is too).

Duparc for me as well - wonderful. There's a great Hyperion CD - Sarah Walker, Thomas Allen, Roger Vignoles.

Talking of l'Invitation au voyage there's Chabrier's setting of the poem too?   You can find it on a very nice disk of Baudelaire settings sung by Felicity Lott with Graham Johnson, in Harmondi Mundi's "musique d'abord" series.  The disk also has some rarities by de Breville,  de Severac, and Capdevielle,  and it's all extremely rewarding material.  Best of all, however, is the set of five Debussy settings of Baudelaire that closes the disk

I got the disk when we we on tour in Dijon, and the staff of the shop where I bought it were raving about it and practically thrust it in my hand unrequested - high praise indeed for foreign performers in the French repertoire

  Not to be overlooked in French song is the Maggie Teyte 2 CD collection on the References, EMI Classics label.     A selection of Berlioz, Chausson, Duparc and Ravel.     

As schoolboy, I remember making my way to a Maggie Teyte recital at the Usher Hall in the Edinburgh Festival of 1948 - my introduction to Melodies Francaises.     My favourite from a completely new sound in my life was, 'Si mes vers avaient des alles' (Hugo).

Garry O'Connor's biography, 'The Pursuit of Perfection - A Life of Maggie Teyte - has a special place on my shelves.

Amen