Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford – Idylle (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford – Idylle (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:04:35 minutes | 1,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

French love songs from three centuries, interspersed with reflective lute solos, constitute an Idylle for mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and lutenist Thomas Dunford.

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Sabine Devieilhe, Lea Desandre, Le Concert d’Astrée & Emmanuelle Haïm – Handel: Italian Cantatas (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sabine Devieilhe, Lea Desandre, Le Concert d’Astrée & Emmanuelle Haïm – Handel: Italian Cantatas (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:36:10 minutes | 1,75 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erato

Surprisingly, the cantatas that Handel wrote in the earlier years of his career remain relatively little known. The thrilling theatricality of three works composed in Italy – Armida abbandonata, La Lucrezia and Aminta e Fillide is savoured to the full by conductor

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Lea Desandre, Nathalie Pérez, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Opera Fuocom and David Stern – Berenice, che fai ? (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lea Desandre, Nathalie Pérez, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Opera Fuocom and David Stern – Berenice, che fai ? (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:41 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Around the Franco-Italian mezzo soprano Lea Desandre – who made her big début with William Christie in the Jardins des voix, then won the “Lyrical Revelation” prize in the Victoires de la musique in 2017 – the sopranos Nathalie Pérez and Chantal Santon-Jeffery have concocted a programme that takes in many different lyrical incarnations of Berenice of Egypt and her misadventures with the King, Antigono Gonatas, through the prism of Metastasio’s Antigone, which has been set to music by well over thirty composers, some focusing more on Antigone, others on Berenice. We will hear little-known airs like those of Haydn, Mozart, Johann Christian Bach and Hasse: the principle virtue of this album is that it allows us to discover these rarities, which often call for virtuoso vocal talents, and so are perfect for the voices of the three singers presented here. A rarity among rarities, we will also find a stunning air from Marianna von Martinez who held a musical salon in Vienna which received visits from… Haydn and Mozart.

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Lea Desandre – Amazone (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lea Desandre – Amazone (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:14 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Little wonder that the fast-rising mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, being of French-Italian descent, chose to present a sumptuous selection of French and Italian arias from the baroque era, ranging from the Neapolitans Francesco Provenzale and Giuseppe de Bottis or Venice’s fabled Vivaldi, to France’s celebrated Grand Si`ecle luminaries such as Couperin, Destouches and Philidor, and reaching as far as Germany where Saxon composer Georg Caspar Sch”urmann and Italian-born Carlo Pallavicino developed their careers – at Saxon courts, indeed, but still in the realm of Italian opera that was then all the rage.

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Thomas Dunford, Jupiter, Lea Desandre, Iestyn Davies – Eternal Heaven (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Thomas Dunford, Jupiter, Lea Desandre, Iestyn Davies – Eternal Heaven (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:25:55 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Lutenist Thomas Dunford’s first project for Warner Classics is a complete Handel programme with his Ensemble Jupiter, and his longstanding musical partners Lea Desandre and lestyn Davies. The album stems from Dunford’s desire to bring together these two sublime voices and tell a love story through Handel’s most beautiful spiritual music. During the pandemic, Thomas and Lea went through Handel’s entire English-language oeuvre to build a narrative Dunford has dubbed ‘a Baroque West Side Story’. The album features arias from Semele, Theodora, Saul, Susanna, Esther, and more.

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