Lea Desandre Provides a Fashionable Voice to Early Music

The mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, a member of the Jupiter Ensemble, doesn’t distinguish between the Baroque period and the age of rock ’n’ roll.

“We grew up with this music,” she mentioned by video name from Montreal. “Similar to we grew up with the Beatles and Amy Winehouse.”

The 28-year-old has established herself as one among in the present day’s most fun voices in early-music efficiency. She additionally cultivates 18th- and Nineteenth-century operatic repertoire from Mozart to Meyerbeer, at outstanding homes reminiscent of Zurich Opera and the Paris Opera.

The singer has appeared yearly on the Salzburg Pageant, on each the opera and live performance phases, since 2018. On Saturday, she and musicians of Jupiter arrive on the Stiftung Mozarteum with this system “Lettres amoureuses” (“Love Letters”). The live performance of Seventeenth-century Italian music — which the group has to this point carried out in France and the Netherlands — juxtaposes arias and instrumental music from well-known composers reminiscent of Monteverdi and Handel with thrilling discoveries reminiscent of Tarquinio Merula and Andrea Falconieri.

Ms. Desandre enjoys one thing of a symbiotic relationship with the ensemble, which was based by the lute participant Thomas Dunford in 2018. They joined forces final yr for her first solo album, “Amazone,” exploring French and Italian repertoire written concerning the feminine warriors of Greek fantasy referred to as Amazons. Their subsequent recording, scheduled for launch this fall, is a lineup of numbers from Handel oratorios titled “Everlasting Heaven.”

Mr. Dunford, 34, promotes a democratic spirit, taking strategies from members of the ensemble within the curation of packages. “It’s a bit like a jazz group in that means,” he mentioned by cellphone from Montreal, the place he and Ms. Desandre have been on tour with the ensemble Les Arts Florissants (the 2 met performing with that group in 2015 and preserve a detailed relationship with its founder, William Christie). “It’s individuals who love spending time collectively and dealing on the music.”

For Jupiter’s first album, “Vivaldi,” the members began a ballot on Fb asking about mates’ favourite arias. In one other stunning twist, every of Jupiter’s albums ends with a newly composed shock observe: For “Amazone,” Mr. Dunford contributed “Amazones,” a tune that addresses the significance of environmental consciousness.

Mr. Dunford, a French native with American roots, cited Jordi Savall, a participant of the viola da gamba (with whom each his mother and father studied), and Mr. Christie as among the many trailblazers who set the stage for in the present day’s technology of gamers. “The very best lesson we will study is to be genuine and passionate,” he mentioned. “As a result of we don’t actually know what Vivaldi seemed like [in his time] — we will simply perceive his music in a logical means and put our personalities into it.”

Ms. Desandre contributes a specific affinity for Italian Baroque music. The singer, who’s of French-Italian heritage, left the conservatory observe to check with the contralto Sara Mingardo in Venice, who had entry to unpublished manuscripts by Vivaldi, together with works by not often heard composers.

Religious songs by Tarquinio Merula shortly turned a place to begin for “Lettres amoureuses.” In “Hor ch’è tempo di dormire” (“Now That It’s Time to Sleep”), the textual content hovers between tenderness and violence because the Virgin Mary has a imaginative and prescient of Jesus’ crucifixion whereas rocking him as a child.

Ms. Desandre in contrast the music to “a beating of the guts” or a sort of spiral. “She says ‘sleep peacefully,’ however she is aware of that one thing tragic goes to occur,” she defined.

Her research with Ms. Mingardo have been primarily based on a holistic, moderately than technical, strategy to vocal research. At a sure level, Ms. Desandre mentioned, she was suggested to “exit and have a superb time, discover a boyfriend and stay — as a way to transmit this expertise onstage.”

Additional singer-mentors embody Natalie Dessay (who impressed Ms. Desandre to enter the occupation when she noticed her on tv at age 12), Vivica Genaux, Véronique Gens and Cecilia Bartoli. The latter two singers carry out on “Amazone”; Mr. Christie additionally joins for an instrumental work by French composer Louis Couperin.

“The album is a sort of homage to key individuals in my life,” Ms. Desandre mentioned. The singer additionally personally selected the photographer, Julien Benhamou, who works with dancers on the Paris Opera, to create the duvet artwork.

That is additionally a nod to Ms. Desandre’s coaching as a ballerina, which she says permits her to let go bodily onstage. “It is likely one of the greatest elements for singing,” she mentioned. “To be anchored and never grow to be mentally harassed.”

For her Salzburg Pageant debut in 2018, the director Jan Lauwers gave her full inventive freedom to bounce onstage whereas singing the comprimario roles of Amore and Valletto in Monteverdi’s “L’incoronazione di Poppea.” The singer mentioned that, if Paris was town through which she was born and raised, Salzburg had grow to be a “metropolis of the guts, as a result of I discovered a sort of household there — people who find themselves keen to take dangers with me.”

A lover of nature, she additionally pointed to town’s inspiring panorama. “To depart rehearsals and discover oneself in entrance of a mountain and surrounded by greenery in 5 minutes is extraordinarily nourishing,” she mentioned. “These are moments of communion which permit us to attach with our power, middle ourselves and be very centered.”

Singing the function of Despina in a manufacturing of Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” that passed off at a scaled-down Salzburg Festival in August 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, stays a very sturdy reminiscence. “There was an depth throughout rehearsals,” she recalled. “Of remembering why we like to make music and be collectively.”

The same spirit drives the Jupiter Ensemble. The group’s members take the time to work on a program till it involves full maturation, they usually all the time stay within the second.

“There are additionally the experiences we share offstage,” Ms. Desandre mentioned. “Which signifies that after we carry out, we take confidence in one another, we pay attention to one another, we like one another. We need to share this happiness with the viewers.”