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On May 14 and 15, Les Épopées and Stéphane Fuget bring Queen Dido back to the Tunis Opera House in her homeland, since, according to Purcell’s opera—based on Virgil’s Aeneid—she was the one who founded the nearby city of Carthage. This new production is distinctive in combining the ensemble’s historically informed performance practice with Middle Eastern music and dance.
At 23, the French musician Manon Papasergio is already pursuing a distinctive path between the viola da gamba and early harps, placing them at the service of rarely explored repertoires, from the Renaissance to the threshold of the Baroque. Invited by ensembles such as Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien and Il Caravaggio, and the author of a much-noticed first recording, she moves forward with insatiable musical curiosity and a firmly embraced refusal of boundaries.
We all know “Iphigenia in Tauris” by Gluck; here is the rarer setting by Tommaso Traetta, brought to disc by Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques. Recorded in Innsbruck, this release brings to light a different musical reading of the myth, poised between the legacy of opera seria and emerging dramatic priorities, and carried by a committed vocal cast. A discovery.
With “La Passione di Gesù”, Leonardo García-Alarcón signs his first major oratorio published under his own name. Inspired by Borges, Bach, Pasolini and the Gospel of Judas, the work creates a spiritual and musical labyrinth in which Judas, Mary Magdalene and the risen Christ become the figures of an inner Passion.
Exactly 250 years ago, on 22 April 1776, the Italian castrato Filippo Finazzi—singer, composer, and former cavalry captain—died near Hamburg. Thirty years earlier, he had taken his leave from the Hamburg stage in an opera of his own making. To pay tribute to him, the Hamburger Ratsmusik is bringing several previously unheard symphonies and cantatas by this singular figure of 18th-century European opera back to life.
From Spain’s Golden Age to China’s Forbidden City, El clave del Emperador retraces the singular destiny of Diego de Pantoja, a Jesuit, musician, and mediator between two worlds. With Íliber Ensemble and Todos los Tonos y Ayres, the recording brings together harpsichord, Chinese instruments, and learned traditions to transform historical inquiry into a true sonic journey.
At the helm of El Gran Teatro del Mundo, Julio Caballero has, for the past ten years, shaped a distinctive aesthetic centred on the French repertoire of the seventeenth century—born of an original return to the sources, meticulous work on declamation, and a pronounced taste for theatricality. From Bern to Madrid, from the Lullists to Rameau: this is the story of an ensemble that makes each project an informed yet free reinterpretation of the codes of the Grand Siècle and beyond.
