Canto Lirico: Anima — With Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford, Nicolas Altstaedt, Bruno Philippe, and Ensemble Jupiter

Magnificent mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, one of today's preeminent early music vocalists, headlines a spectacular all-Vivaldi program from the 2026 Salzburg Festival with her longtime collaborators, the Ensemble Jupiter and lutenist-conductor Thomas Dunford, joined as well by world-famous cellists Nicolas Altstaedt and Bruno Philippe. Desandre shows off the extraordinary variety of Antonio Vivaldi's vocal music, bringing her velvety tone and soulful phrasing to arias like "Vedrò con mio diletto" from Il Giustino and the famous "Cum dederit" from Nisi Dominus, and electrifying the stage with the furious runs of "Armatae face et anguibus" from Juditha triumphans. Altstaedt and Philippe team up for the exquisite Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, the only such concerto Vivaldi composed, and among the most emotionally potent of all his works: "a concerto to single out among the hundreds that Vivaldi wrote," in the words of musicologist Michael Talbot. The Ensemble Jupiter and their founder and conductor Dunford, who also performs the solo role in the sublime Lute Concerto in D, are note-perfect in their approach to this glorious repertoire, one Italian Baroque jewel after another.

Photo © James Bort