Lea Desandre, Nathalie Pérez, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Opera Fuoco & David Stern
Biography Lea Desandre, Nathalie Pérez, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Opera Fuoco & David Stern
Orchestre d’OPERA FUOCO & David Stern
Since its founding in 2003 by conductor David Stern, the Paris-based opera company Opera Fuoco has been dedicated to the performance of lyric repertoire from the mid-18th century to the present. It combines an ambitious opera studio and a distinctive orchestral ensemble, featuring some of the leading instrumentalists performing on period instruments.
Stern devotes himself, with the help of his musical team, to working with young professional vocalists, offering large-scale opera productions. Opera Fuoco’s productions have taken the studio singers and the orchestra to halls such as Shanghai Symphony Hall, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Lucerne and Evian Festivals, Lufthansa Festival in London as well as the Opera houses of Metz, Rouen, Reims, Orleans and La Rochelle.
Opera Fuoco collaborated with an impressive list of vocal stars including Karine Deshayes, Vivica Genaux, Ann Hallenberg, Danielle De Niese, Paul Agnew, Markus Werba, and Lisa Larsson. In seeking to interpret well-known repertoire as well as unknown vocal works, Opera Fuoco has recently recorded Johann Christian Bach’s newly discovered opera ‘Zanaida’.
Important events in the company’s past seasons include the commission of a new opera, ‘Così Fanciulli’, a prequel to Mozart’s ‘Così fan tutte’, with music by Nicolas Bacri and a libretto by french literary star Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
Opera Fuoco was invited to inaugurate the new Shanghai Baroque Festival in 2014, performing Haendel’s ‘Giulio Cesare’ and Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’. They reappeared in 2015 with Haendel’s ‘Alcina’. In 2016 the company was reinvited to collaborate with the International Telemann Festival and Mageburg Theatre with a fully staged production of Telemann’s comic singspiel ‘Damon’. This season, Opera Fuoco is starting a new residence at the Levallois Salle Ravel near Paris.
