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.