DAVID STERN

Begun in 1715 as a 1-part mass for the Dresden court, Bach came back to the score throughout his life, ultimately completing it in 1749 shortly before his death. Its manuscript, preserved in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek joins Beethoven’s 9th symphony as the only musical works to be included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.. Joining Opera Fuoco’s orchestra and three young artists on this tour to the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall ~ where the piece will be heard for the first time in 100 years, the Paris Philharmonie and Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, are soloists Andreas Scholl, Markus Werba, Laurent Naouri and the Tölzer Knabenchor.

Andreas Scholl returns to the festival after a series of performances in 2016. He will be joined by Markus Werba, bass-baritone and three members of Opera Fuoco’s young artist program, Theodora Raftis, Adèle Charvet and Andrés Agudelo.  David Stern has previously brought Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Alcina to the festival as well as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and vocal soloists such as Vivica Genaux, Rafaela Milanese, and Alice Coote. This year’s festival will also include a concert with Paris-based 18th century wind ensemble, Tibiades and a masterclass by French baroque cellist, Jérôme Huile.

Having worked with period instrument ensembles in Europe for the past thirty years, and as founder and director of Opera Fuoco, a Paris-based young artists program and period instrument ensemble, I am looking forward to sharing the passion and artistry of 18th-century music in the US. For the inaugural season I will be collaborating with renowned Canadian soprano Dominique Labelle and we will focus on arias from Handel’s operas and oratorios. The stunning replica of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars theater in Staunton, Virginia is a perfect acoustic for this repertoire. The singers will be accompanied by experts in baroque style and students from the Institue who are expanding their understanding of baroque string technique.

https://www.heifetzinstitute.org/baroque/

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.

FRENCH ROMANTIC CANTATAS

Recording produced by the Palazetto Bru Zane, Centre de Musique Romantique
Française, and released by Zig-Zag Territoires / Outhere

Karin Deshayes joins an impressive list of vocal artists with whom David Stern and Opera Fuoco have performed and recorded.  The French Romantic Cantatas represents a sampling of Cherubini and his contemporaries with excerpts form Cherubini’s Medée and Circé and cantatas by Hérold, Catel and Boisselot. These cantatas are highly dramatic works in the styles of  bel canto and magnificently orchestrated precursors to the lyric works of Berlioz. The romantic, mythological theme of the femme abandonnée unites all five works on this new disc. The French Romantic Cantatas is Opera Fuoco’s fourth disc, following Johann Christian Bach’s opera, Zanaida, released in 2012.