Recto Verso is the second studio album by French singer Zaz, released on 10 May 2013 under the label Play On. The album was Zaz's first album in three years, after her eponymous début, released in 2010. It débuted on the French Album Chart at #2 and to date has spawned three singles, "On ira", "Si" and "Gamine". Musically, it is largely in a similar style to Zaz's début album. The title refers to the two sides of Zaz's personality, which she wished to express in the music of the album. Recto Verso went on to spend ten weeks in the top 10 albums and has been certified Double Platinum as of December 2013.

Babacar is a 1987 music album by France Gall with music and lyrics by Michel Berger. It is certified Diamond. Although she's best-known as the pretty, perky teenager who won the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest with her hit "Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son," French pop singer France Gall has had a much longer and more varied career than that, having released solid records almost non-stop since the early '60s. Although only a cult figure in most of the rest of the world, Gall is a major star and beloved figure in her native country.

The Art of Courtly Love takes center stage on Duo Trobairitz's Hyperion CD The Language of Love, which is devoted to French troubadour and trouvère songs of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. These are monophonic songs originally performed in the courts of France of that day, and performing them in modern times has proven a challenge; as this is some of the earliest secular music to be written down, the sources don't reveal a whole lot about the way such pieces were heard. While a handful of treatises and other accounts exist about troubadours and the practices they observed, listeners still need to use their imagination to make a performance of such music credible and comprehensive to a twenty-first century audience.

Guillaume de Machaut was one of the great composers of a pivotal period at the intersection between the late medieval times and the Renaissance. His works include sacred compositions, such as his Messe de Nostre Dame, which took polyphonic music to new summits, as well as popular dances and songs that reveal the influence of the trouvères.
Yet this disc actually contains little music by Machaut. Only the last two pieces are by him. This leads to a bit of confusion: is Calliope trying to use Machaut’s name to sell a compilation of medieval music? This barely seems necessary, yet there is clearly some ambiguity.

The French division of the massive EMI corporation has released a compendium called Les Introuvables de Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (EMI 68509, six CDs), and it contains so much outstanding material that one feels churlish complaining about what it lacks. But here we go. These six discs contain more than 125 lieder, ballads, cantatas and songs – primarily in German, but also in French, Italian, Latin and English – recorded mostly in the 1950s and '60s when Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's voice was one of the wonders of the musical universe.

This fabulous five disc set is replete with some of those old Stokowski warhorses all recorded in absolutely mind boggling Phase 4 sound, overblown perhaps but astounding for its time. Decca's remastering is absolutely magnificent and the discs are jam packed with almost six hours of music. This is another fine memorial to a great conductor who remained astonishingly vital until the very end of his life.

The epic tale of the fall of Troy haunted Berlioz from childhood and inspired some of his most passionately dramatic, richly colorful music. This is Colin Davis's second recording of Les Troyens, following his (out-of-print) 1969 version. Magnificent though it was, some reckoned that reading lacked something in zip. Here, however, such reservations could never apply. Recorded across several lavishly praised concert performances in London in December 2000, this Troyens has an extraordinary electricity and rhythmic drive.

This captivating new release from PENTATONE celebrates the glittering world of 19th-century opera and the timeless beauty of the golden age of bel canto. Featuring music by Gaetano Donizetti, Gioacchino Rossini, Georges Bizet, Léo Delibes, and Giuseppe Verdi, the album showcases soprano Erin Morley and tenor Lawrence Brownlee—two of today’s most exciting voices—joined by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester under the baton of conductor Ivan Repušić. Together, they bring fresh brilliance to the French and Italian repertoire with performances that balance vocal agility, lyrical finesse, and emotional power.