The French mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac has already given Zurich audiences some thrilling opera evenings: with her dazzling stage presence, she impressed, for example, as the ancient heroin Phèdre in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie or as Médée in Charpentier's opera of the same name. Before she can be seen as Sara in the new production of Donizetti's Roberto Devereux from February, she will give a song recital in January together with pianist Pascal Jourdan with an exclusively French programme. In addition to songs and arias by Henri Duparc, Jules Massenet, Jacques Offenbach, Georges Bizet and Pauline Viardot, the programme also includes La Dame de Monte-Carlo by Francis Poulenc, based on a text by Jean Cocteau. Poulenc wrote this humorous monodrama about an old lady who gambles away her winnings and ends up throwing herself into the sea, two years before his death. «I liked this monologue because it took me back to the years 1923 to 1925, when I lived with the composer Auric in Monte-Carlo, in the imperial shadow of Diaghilev. I often saw those old wrecks at close quarters, the lightly fingered ladies of the gaming tables. I must honestly confess that Auric and I also ran into them in the pawnshop, where our ill-advised youth took us once or twice.»