The evening, nightfall, are universal themes conducive to writing, to music, to painting; they pass through us and inspire in us contrasting feelings between beauty and darkness, light and shadow, sleep and dreams. The movement towards twilight is a mix of sweetness, warmth, yet also melancholy, for it takes each of us back to our solitude. For some, sleep is synonymous with peacefulness whereas for others it gives rise to worry; everyone hopes, however, that the night will do away with all torment.

This programme brings together songs, lieder and opera arias; if the songs written to the poems of Verlaine or Éluard see their texts take on capital importance, the others are calm, like simple lullabies, the text moving into the background. Some of these works have cradled our childhoods and are very well known, but, nonetheless, this disc also includes many discoveries. All these pieces are beautiful, they touch and appease us, for in the end what do we need to sleep peacefully? A ritual, reassuring habits, a cuddle… a lullaby.

This discographic project is above all the gift of a mother to her children, with the special feature that this mother is an opera singer of international standing: the soprano Eugénie Warnier. Accompanied by the pianist Marine Thoreau La Salle and the quartet Les Heures du jour for the delicate arrangements of certain works, she shares with you, with sincerity and passion, the intimacy of bedtime with her own children. The cherry on the cake is that the whole is delicately enveloped in a velvet casing consisting of original illustrations by Paul Cox and a text by the novelist Yasmina Khadra.

Contents:
1. Soir (Gabriel Fauré)
2. Cancion de cuna para dormir a un negrito (Xavier Montsalvatge)
3. Wiegenlied (Johannes Brahms)
4. Wiegenlied (Franz Schubert)
5. Nuit Silencieuse (Cantilène) (Charles Gounod)
6. Tu vois le feu du soir (Francis Poulenc)
7. L’heure exquise (Reynaldo Hahn)
8. Nana (Manuel de Falla)
9. Le Sommeil (Francis Poulenc)
10. Brezairola (Joseph Canteloube)
11. Apaisement (Ernest Chausson)
12. Berceuse (sur un vieil air) (Georges Bizet)
13. Wiegenlied (Bernhard Flies)
14. The Nurse’s Song (Benjamin Britten)
15. Berceuse de Jocelyn (Benjamin Godard)
16. Wiegenlied (Richard Strauss)
17. Ma poupée chérie (Déodat de Séverac)
18. Japanese lullaby
19. La Lune blanche (Gabriel Fauré)