ANNE DE BRETAGNE: LIVE AU CHATEAU DES DUCS DE BRETAGNE

In my review of the live version of the first part of Alan Simon's Excalibur trilogy, I claimed that it is better than the studio version. With Anne de Bretagne, I feel the opposite way. This behemoth of a live album is a three disc set featuring, in addition to a large cast of Folk and Rock musicians, a choir, a symphony orchestra, and a narrator! The narration was not present on the studio version and takes up many minutes here. As it is in French its meaning is (almost) totally lost on me; it becomes a distraction, an annoyance. The vocals are primarily in French as well, but when non-French musicians like Les Holroyd (of Barclay James Harvest) and Simon Nicol and Chris Leslie (of Fairport Convention) take the lead the language naturally shifts to English.

The first two discs contain the complete live performance of Anne de Bretagne: Le Rock Opera d'Alan Simon. The third disc repeats some themes performed on classical piano only. I feel that there is just a little too much of everything here and that Simon bit off more than he could chew this time. There certainly are some good moments here, but listening to the whole thing in a single sitting wears the listener out. (And disc three is for fans of classical music only.)

If you are curious about Alan Simon's musical projects (that feature many well-known people from the Prog music world), I strongly recommend you to start with the Excalibur trilogy (preferably in backward chronological order). Anne de Bretagne is somewhat less interesting, but if you want to investigate this one as well I would suggest going for the studio version.