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French-Italian mezzo-soprano, Lea Desandre, was 20 when she was awarded a place on William Christie’s Le Jardin des Voix Academy. In 2017 she was named Vocal Disovery at the Victoires de la Musique Classique Awards. She studied singing in Paris and Venice with Sara Mingardo, Véronique Gens, Vivica Genaux and Valérie Guillorit; and can also look back on a 12-year period of training as a ballet dancer. In 2013 she won first prize as a young artist at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux .
Since 2015 Lea Desandre has been acclaimed in various roles, including Urbain in Les Huguenots, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Annio in W.A. Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, Sesto in George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare, Dido in Dido and Aeneas, Messaggera in L’Orfeo, Flerida in Cavalli’s Erismena and the title role in Marais’ Alcione. In 2018 she delighted her audiences at the Paris Opéra Comique in a fully-staged one-woman show, Et in Arcadia ego, with music by Rameau.
Lea Desandre made her Salzburg Festival debut at Whitsun 2018 in Offenbach’s La Périchole under Marc Minkowski, returning that same summer as Amore and Valletto in L’incoronazione di Poppea under William Christie/Lawers and at Whitsun 2019 for Antonio Caldara’s oratorio La morte d’Abel and for the gala concert Farinelli & Friends with Cecilia Bartoli. In the summer 2019 she was heard as Vénus in Orphée aux enfers under Mazzola/Kosky and for the 100 years of the Festival, she made her debuts as Despina in W.A. Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte under Mallwitz/Loy.
Concert appearances and song recitals have taken Lea Desandre to London’s Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Philharmonie de Paris, the Opéra National de Bordeaux, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Sydney Opera House, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, Shanghai Symphony Hall ... As a committed chamber recitalist she also appears regularly with the lutenist Thomas Dunford and his Jupiter ensemble. In addition to the above-named conductors, she has also worked with John Eliot Gardiner, Louis Langrée, Raphaël Pichon, Jordi Savall, Emmanuelle Haïm, Enrique Mazzola and Leonardo García-Alarcón.
Lea Desandre’s CDs include Barricades with Jean Rondeau, Antonio Vivaldi with the Jupiter ensemble, G.F. Handel's: Italian Cantatas with Sabine Devieilhe, Berenice, che fai? with Opera Fuoco (Director: David Stern) and Cities with Thibault Cauvin.
Plans for 2020-2021 include Hippolyte et Aricie at the Opéra Comique, Idamante in W.A. Mozart's Idomeneo at the Berlin State Opera, L’Amour in Orphée et Eurydice in Versailles, Annio in W.A. Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and Cherubino in W.A. Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. A concert tour celebrating the release of her first solo album, Amazones (Erato), will take her and the Jupiter ensemble to the Philharmonie de Paris, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Festival de Pâques d’Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere. She will also be heard as Tamiri in a concert performance of W.A. Mozart's Il re pastore at the Salzburg Mozartwoche Festival. |
