Lea Desandre, Nathalie Pérez, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Opera Fuoco and David Stern - Berenice, che fai ? (2017) [24/96]

Opera Fuoco's latest recording features three former members of the Opera Fuoco studio, Lea Desandré, Natalie Perez, Chantal Santon and the Opera Fuoco orchestra conducted by David Stern. Berenice, che fai? is a compilation of late Baroque and early Classical works based principally on Metastasio’s famous 18th-century opera scene «Ah Berenice» from his opera Antigono. Not only was the scene set to music by such composers as Haydn and Hasse, but also by Antonio Maria Mazzoni and Marianna Martinez, a composer of Spanish descent who was widely connected to the Viennese music scene and, for a time, lived in the same noble house as Metastasio and Haydn at Grosse Michelstrasse. The young Mozart’s concert aria «Berenice» and Johann Christian Bach’s aria «Confusa, smarrita» from the composer’s lost pasticcio opera, Berenice, as well as Hasse’s Antigono overture complement the program.

Berenice, que fai… Or frantic Berenice. Metastasio’s heroin, facing a dilemma of love versus duty, inspired the great operatic composers such as Hasse, Haydn, Mozart such as one of their female peers, still unknown today, Marianna Martinez, contemporary and even neighboring some of them.

To interpret this colorful character, three singers and an orchestra: the mezzo Léa Desandre, rewarded at the Victoires de la Musique in 2017, the sopranos Natalie Perez and Chantal Santon-Jeffery, and the impetuous conductor David Stern at the head of his period instruments-ensemble, Opera Fuoco.

True actors, these musicians restore the theatrical dimension of these scores without sacrificing the sensitive and fragile aspect of the character. An emotional complexity, between exhilarating madness and more tragic pages, that we find in Hasse’s Sinfonia, from his opera Antigono and of which Opera Fuoco gives us a full version of panache.

Tracklist:

Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

Scena di Berenice, Hob.XXIVa:10
1 Recitativo "Berenice, che fai" 07:45
2 Aria "Non partir bell’idol moi" 05:09

Johann Christian Bach (1735 - 1982)

Catone in Utica, W. G2, Act III, Scène 2
3 Aria "Confusa, smarrita" 07:27

Mariana Martinez (1744 - 1812)

Scena di Berenice
4 Recitativo "Berenice, che fai" 04:43
5 Aria "Non partir bell’idol moi" 07:57

Antonio Mazzoni (1717 - 1785)

Antigono
6 Recitativo "Berenice, che fai" 04:08
7 Aria "Non partir bell’idol moi" 04:00

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)

A Berenice, K. 70/61c
8 Recitativo "A Berenice" 02:28
9 Aria "Sol nascente" 09:37

Johann Adolf Hasse (1699 - 1783)

Antigono "Sinfonia"
10 I. Allegro di molto 02:13
11 II. Andantino 02:59
12 III. Allegro di molto 01:17

Antigono "Scena di Berenice"
13 Recitativo "Berenice, che fai" 03:37
14 Aria "Non partir bell’idol moi" 05:14

Personnel:
Chantal Santon, soprano
Natalie Perez, soprano
Lea Desandre, mezzo-soprano
Adèle Charvet, mezzo-soprano
Orchestre d’OPERA FUOCO
David Stern, direction