The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Six months in, 2024 already seems to have brought its fair share of deaths in the world of classical music. Few, however, have come as such a bolt from the blue as that of the rising star coloratura soprano Jodie Devos, who died on Sunday 16 June at the age of just 35, following a brief battle against an aggressive form of cancer. Members of the musical community both in her native Belgium and on the international scene (where she had achieved increasing prominence and critical superlatives) have all been paying tribute to a star who shone with spectacular brightness and was extinguished way too soon.

Born on 10 October 1988 in Libramont-Chevigny, Belgium, Devos began singing classes at the age of five, with a focus on popular music. It was her dance lessons, however, that introduced her to the classical repertoire with which she soon fell in love. Her later studies were at the Institut Royal Supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie in Namur, and a Master’s course at London’s Royal Academy of Music from which she graduated in 2013. The following year she won second prize as well as the coveted audience prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Later in 2014 she joined the company of Paris’s Opéra-Comique.

From the start of her career it was evident that Devos’s light, agile, brilliantly focused voice was ideally suited to the operatic coloratura repertoire, from Mozart’s Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte) via Rossini and Johann Strauss II (Adele in Die Fledermaus) to Richard Strauss’s Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos). She had a special  affinity with the French repertoire, and her first commercial recording (released in 2016 on the Alpha Classics label which would become her home) paired her with mezzo-soprano Caroline Meng and the Quatuor Giardini on a charming album entitled ‘Il était une fois…’ (‘Once Upon a Time…’) which included Cinderella-themed music by Isouard, Massenet and Viardot, as well as Offenbach.

Further collaborative recordings followed, but it was Devos’s debut solo recital ‘Offenbach Colorature’ that really brought her to wider attention. This included a dazzling selection from the composer’s operettas, both the better-known ones that she was already making her own on stage and several rarities. The pinpoint accuracy of the voice, combined with an evident engagement with both words and music, and a technique which allowed her to ride with apparent ease over the orchestra, all contributed to the album’s phenomenal success.

In many ways just as remarkable was Devos’s second solo album, ‘And Love Said…’, a recital disc with pianist Nicolas Krüger which reflected her personal career journey, including a liberal selection of English music (Bridge, Gurney, Vaughan Williams, Britten and Walton), the Belgian-British composer Irene Poldowski, and Milhaud and Tailleferre. It’s an album notable for the ease and intimacy of its delivery, an expressive openness that links it to the popular music traditions with which she started out, and capped by not just a special commission from fellow-Belgian Patrick Leterme, but Freddie Mercury’s ‘You take my breath away’, which she had heard in the legendary singer-songwriter’s Hyde Park performance.

Devos’s most recent solo album (released in September 2022) returned to more traditional classical fare, but was every bit as sensational as her first. ‘Bijoux perdus’ (‘Lost Jewels’) was a tribute to the French-Belgian singer Marie Cabel (1827–1885), sweeping across a wide range of French operas comiques by such composers as Adam, Auber, Halévy, Meyerbeer and Thomas, the vast majority rarely heard nowadays. Highlights include the ‘Lyre Song’ from Victor Massé’s Galathée, with its infectious closing polonaise, the waltz-song ‘Ombre légère’ from Meyerbeer’s Le Pardon de Ploërmel, and the more introspective romance ‘Pour rester en cette demeure’ from Adam’s Le Bijou perdu. Our effusive review on the disc’s release was: ‘These “Bijoux perdus” become in her hands “Bijoux retrouvés”. Altogether a spellbinding album, recommended with the greatest enthusiasm!’

Although the lighter Classical and Romantic repertoire was the most obvious focus of Jodie Devos’s tragically brief career, she was a singer of enormous range and stylistic expertise. Her discography ranges from Rameau’s Zoroastre to the late Philippe Boesmans’ one-acter On purge bébé. Other recordings graced by her voice include Saint-Saëns’s first opera, Le Timbre d’argent (on Bru Zane), and on DVD/Blu-ray both Gounod’s La Nonne sanglante and (most essentially) Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne for Naxos.

It seems a particularly cruel blow that the world of music and opera in particular has been robbed of a voice of such vibrancy, colour and technical splendour, and we must hope that more of Jodie Devos’s curtailed legacy may be released. In a world where many singers fail to live up to their initial promise, she was the real deal, a coloratura for the new century. We extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends and colleagues.

Jodie Devos - Four essential recordings:
Offenbach Colorature  ALPHA437
And Love Said...  ALPHA668
Bijoux perdus  ALPHA877
Offenbach - La Vie Parisienne  211075354 (DVD) / NBD0163V (Blu-ray)