Antonio Vivaldi, Francesco Cavalli, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Francesco Provenzale
Featured artists:
Cecilia Bartoli, Véronique Gens, William Christie, Thomas Dunford, Jupiter
Little wonder that the fast-rising mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, being of French-Italian descent, chose to present a sumptuous selection of French and Italian arias from the baroque era, ranging from the Neapolitans Francesco Provenzale and Giuseppe de Bottis or Venice’s fabled Vivaldi, to France’s celebrated Grand Siècle luminaries such as Couperin, Destouches and Philidor, and reaching as far as Germany where Saxon composer Georg Caspar Schürmann and Italian-born Carlo Pallavicino developed their careers – at Saxon courts, indeed, but still in the realm of Italian opera that was then all the rage.
To download extended content, including liner notes by Erik Orsenna, Yannis François and Alessio Ruffatti and original sung texts with translations in English, French and German please click here.