BRUNO DE SÁ Roma Travestita by Various, Dt. 16 Maig 2023, De (2022/2022), Director musical Fransesco Corti

The soprano voice of the Brazilian singer Bruno de Sá doesn’t only soar to astonishing heights but also avails of such flexibility and limberness that he can dance gaily through the most daredevil scores and, thanks to its profoundly expressive potential, lends emotional depth to every aria. His powerful and yet mellow voice paired with extraordinary intensity and musicality make Bruno de Sá into a unique phenomenon on the stages of our world. In the programme Roma Travestita, the young singer focuses on Roman opera between the years 1720 and 1760. Since women at this time in the Papal States were prohibited from appearing in public as actresses or singers, nevertheless, audiences had no desire to be deprived of the enjoyment of operatic performances; castrati had to slip into the female costumes. In this guise many a castrato had the heads of their male public spinning. Montesquieu, for example, reports of his visit to Rome: “A young Englishman who thought one of these castrati to be a woman was inflamed with violent love for him and was left languishing in this fit of passion for more than a whole month.” Many of the pre-eminent composers of this time didn’t wish to miss the chance of writing “female” arias about love and jealousy, joy and pain for the throats of these adulated male singers. Together with the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro under Francesco Corti, Bruna de Sá lends his radiant and poignant soprano voice to the stage heroines of Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Arena, and more.