Lea Desandre / Natalie Pérez / Chantal Santon-Jeffery / Opera Fuoco / David Stern BERENICE, CHE FAI?

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.