The choir of Metaboles, admirable in its agility and beauty

Excellent idea to have added half-secular, half-sacred works by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) to the new version of the Messe un jour ordinaire, by Bernard Cavanna (born in 1951). If Claude Rostand saw in Poulenc "a monk and a thug", the first takes precedence over the second here: nothing provocative in Un soir de neige, a poignant war cantata after Paul Éluard, nor in the Quatre Motets pour un temps de pénitence and the motet Exultate Deo. Constant in these pieces, the fear of darkness and death leads in the motets to a vibrant profession of faith. The opposite happens at Cavanna, where a young drug addict's cry for help collides with a liturgical ritual that spirals into madness. Darkly ironic, this explosive Mass demands great virtuosity from the performers. Admirable in beauty and agility, the Métaboles choir first performs a cappella at Poulenc, then disputes at Cavanna, a dizzying game of ping pong with the Multilaterale ensemble, the violin of Noëmi Schindler, the sopranos Isabelle Lagarde and Emilie Rose Bry, and tenor Kiup Lee. As musical director, Léo Warynski is as comfortable in fervor as in chaos.