Vocalist Marie-Claire Giraud announces the release of Barcarolle, a luminous new single that dares to do what few artists would attempt: reimagine one of opera’s most beloved arias as a living, breathing jazz performance. The result is transcendent, a recording that honors the profound beauty of Offenbach’s original while opening it up to the world in an entirely new way.

Originally the celebrated duet from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tale of Hoffmann, Barcarolle is built around one of music’s most intoxicating lines: “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour, souris à nos ivresses”, Beautiful night, oh night of love, smile at our intoxication. It is a song about Hoffman’s eternal quest for love, and Marie-Claire has carried it with her for a lifetime.

“Sondra Radvanovsky is one of the most profoundly moving opera artists on the planet, and she is singing this duet with me.”

— Marie-Claire Giraud

To complete the duet, Marie-Claire invited opera superstar Sondra Radvanovsky, internationally acclaimed as “one of the most profoundly moving opera artists on the planet” (OperaWire), a 2025 International Opera Awards nominee, and widely regarded as one of the finest living interpreters of Verdi and Puccini, to lend her incomparable voice. The two sopranos’ voices intertwine with devastating beauty, creating something that is at once timeless and startlingly fresh.

“Singing the Barcarolle with Marie-Claire was pure joy. To hear a duet I’ve loved my whole life reborn alongside a live jazz band, opera and jazz meeting as if they’d always belonged together, was unforgettable. That fearlessness is her gift, and I’m honored she asked me to sing it with her.”

• Sondra Radvanovsky 

Barcarolle is a centerpiece of Marie-Claire’s boldly conceived new album, “My Big Bold & Beautiful Technicolor Fantasy”, a project that embodies her vision of a world where opera, jazz, pop, and classical music exist not in separate rooms but in one glorious, uninhibited space. The album also features a song co-written with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison.

Marie-Claire commissioned acclaimed New York songwriter and jazz pianist Jeff Franzel, whose songs have been recorded by artists from Frank Sinatra collaborations to Taylor Dayne and Plácido Domingo, with over 30 million albums sold worldwide, to write a jazz arrangement of the piece. Recorded with a live jazz band featuring piano, upright bass, trumpet, and drums, the arrangement breathes new life into Offenbach’s masterwork without diminishing a note of its grandeur.

“I always had the idea of mixing opera with other genres. Barcarolle is one of my favorite arias of all time, it deserves to be heard by everyone, not just opera audiences. Life’s most beautiful moments deserve this song.”

— Marie-Claire Giraud

Marie-Claire has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall (twice), the United Nations General Assembly Hall (seven times), Birdland, and Dizzy’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, among many prestigious venues. An Intercontinental Music Award winner and Amadeus International Classical Music Competition Silver medalist, she is a voice that belongs to many genres.

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