Opéra sauvage

In December 1986, sitting at 42 on the Billboard album chart, was a record that had come out seven years earlier: the music for a French television nature series. The music site uDiscover gives the reason in a line. The opening track had been used in a commercial for Ernest & Julio Gallo wine. The album stayed on the chart for 39 weeks in all, and the English Wikipedia counts it as Vangelis's second most successful album in the United States, behind Chariots of Fire.

Where it sits in music history

How Vangelis got here is told in Vangelis, where to start. The guide puts this record fourth. It is the quietest of the five, and the place where you can hear the difference between the loud Vangelis and the quiet one.

There is small print across the top of the sleeve: original music by Vangelis Papathanassiou for the television series by Frédéric Rossif. According to the French Wikipedia, L'Opéra sauvage ran to 18 documentaries of 50 minutes each, shown on Antenne 2 from 1976; the first, on Venezuela, went out on 24 December 1976. The fan site Vangelis Movements says 21 episodes of about 52 minutes, between 1975 and 1979. The count depends on the source. What they agree on is the subject: land, animals and people.

Rossif and Vangelis already had a long working history. Before this came L'Apocalypse des animaux, recorded in 1970 and broadcast in 1973, and La Fête sauvage in 1975. This album gathers the music from the series that followed.

It was recorded at Nemo Studios, near Marble Arch in London, the studio Vangelis had been working in since 1975. The engineer was Keith Spencer-Allen. The British magazine Sound International profiled the studio twice, in December 1978 and January 1979, and named the Yamaha CS-80 as his favourite instrument at the time. Most of this record comes out of that machine. Vangelis also played piano, Fender Rhodes, drums and percussion, xylophone, acoustic guitar and bass guitar. There was one guest: Jon Anderson of Yes played harp on "Flamants roses".

Track list

Times are from the 1979 French LP as listed on Discogs. Wikipedia and the CD editions give each track a few seconds less.

Following "Flamants roses"

The guide says to start with "L'Enfant". When you play the whole record, the last track is the one to follow. It runs 11:57 and closes side two. The English Wikipedia describes it as a piece in several parts. It starts slow, picks up pace and ends on something close to the blues, and Jon Anderson's harp is out in front the whole way.

At around 3:20 the sound almost disappears. Into the gap fall two soft notes on a glockenspiel or something like it. It is where you take a breath. Those 7 seconds went missing from one later edition; more on that at the end.

After that, let it carry you. The tempo lifts, the percussion comes in, and your feet answer before you decide anything. When the harp and the bluesy line meet at the close, an ear that has spent 40-odd minutes with synthesizers comes back to the sound of fingers on strings.

The rest of the record

"Hymne" opens the album at 2:44. In America it ran under the Gallo wine commercials in a version Vangelis rearranged for them. The English Wikipedia says that in Italy it was the music for Barilla pasta advertising all through the eighties. In Chariots of Fire a re-recorded version plays under Eric Liddell's run in the Scottish Highlands.

"Rêve" means dream, and runs 12:36. The English Wikipedia calls it dreamy and calm, with heavy use of Fender Rhodes electric piano and a hint of jazz at the climax.

"L'Enfant" runs 5:00. Peter Weir used it as it stands for two scenes in his 1982 film The Year of Living Dangerously, and Hugh Hudson shot the beach sequence of Chariots of Fire to it.

"Mouettes" means gulls and "Irlande" is Ireland. In "Chromatique" a line moves in semitones over chords on an acoustic guitar.

How to listen

• "L'Enfant" first, then "Hymne", the order the guide suggests. You have probably heard both somewhere.
• Then go back to the top of side one and play it through. No need to picture the documentary. The sound does the landscape on its own.
• Keep it quiet, and play it at night. Falling asleep in "Rêve" is allowed.
• In "Flamants roses", wait for the two notes at around 3:20.

What happened next

"Hymne", backed with "Irlande", came out as a single in the Netherlands in 1979. After that the album just kept selling, quietly. It was repressed in Canada in 1986 and peaked at 42 on the Billboard chart dated 13 December that year. Music written for Rossif's pictures ended up travelling much further on wine, pasta and film.

At the Eureka concert in Rotterdam in 1991, Vangelis brought "Hymne" back as a choral piece. In 2011 Esoteric Recordings released a remaster made under his own supervision.

The one track to send a friend

Send "L'Enfant", and tell them it is 5 minutes long. Then add this: it was written for a French television nature documentary. Two film directors picked it up afterwards, and one of them played it through loudspeakers on a beach while his actors ran.

Where to get it

The 1979 French LP on Polydor, 2473 105, is the record as it first appeared. On CD there is the 2011 Esoteric remaster, supervised by Vangelis himself. According to the fan site Elsewhere, the remaster in the 2016 box set Delectus loses the quiet 7 seconds around 3:20 in "Flamants roses", so if you want those two notes, pick another edition. Turn the lights off and put the last track on. Two notes fall into the silence, and then the harp comes in.

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