The 2022 Season of Musikàmera continues under the sign of the Baroque with the young French mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, winner in 2017 of the Victoires de la Musique prize as a revelation of French opera and of the prestigious Opus Klassik in 2022 as Female singer of the year, engaged together with Thomas Dunford, the Eric Clapton of the lute – as the BBC defined him – in the performance of Laissez durer la nuit, a program of seventeenth-century French vocal music that will transport spectators to an evening at the court of Louis XIV, the King Sun. Desandre and Dunford will perform pieces by Michel Lambert (Ma bergère est tendre et fidèle – Vos mépris chaque jour – Ombre de mon amant), Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Celle qui fait tout mon tourment – Auprès du feu on fait l’amour – Tristes désert, sombre retraite – Sans frayeur dans ce bois), Sébastien Le Camus (On n’entend rien dans ce bocage – Laissez durer la nuit – Forêts solitaires), Marin Marais (Les Voix Humaines), Honoré d’Ambruys (Le dou x silence de nos bois) and Robert de Visée (Gavotte en ré mineur – Chaconne en ré mineur – Prélude et Sarabande en ré mineur – Allemande “La Royale” – Rondeau “La mascarade”). Each word is musically painted to arouse emotions in the listener through the color of the voice and the improvisation of the lute, as in a sound poem.
