Marie Théoleyre

Marie Théoleyre, soprano Rémy Brès-Feuillet, alto Ensemble La Palatine Guillaume Haldenwang, harpsichord Noémie Lenhof, viola da gamba Manon Papasergio, harp & viol

Claudio Monteverdi Le Couronnement de Poppée (extracts)Francesco Cavalli La Calisto (extracts)Luigi Rossi Orfeo (extracts)

With L'Orfeo in 1607, Claudio Monteverdi established himself as the genius who gave opera, then still in full gestation, its letters of nobility and its full human dimension. Almost four decades later, L'Incoronazione di Poppea (1642) opens the doors of Venetian opera with all its excess and irresistible melodic seduction (the music written for Poppea and Nerone displays a suffocating sensuality). His disciple, Francesco Cavalli, enriches this prodigious wealth further with an incomparable art, of which La Calisto (1651) remains the best-known example. But the Serenissima is not alone in revelling in these lush sonorities: at the request of Cardinal Mazarin, the Roman Luigi Rossi premiered in Paris in 1647 an Orfeo that stands in this direct lineage and proves to be an authentic masterpiece.

Around the common thread formed by the duets between Poppea and Nerone, the superb voices of Marie Théoleyre and Rémy Brès-Feuillet join together to celebrate this splendid repertoire, carried by the virtuosi of the ensemble La Palatine, led by harpsichordist Guillaume Haldenwang.