During the inauguration of the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra season, the ensemble will be conducted by Jarosław Thiel, and the soloist will be the excellent Bruno de Sá – a sopranist (one of the rarest voices). The artist made his debut in São Paulo in 2015, and since 2019 has regularly performed in Europe, arousing great enthusiasm among audiences and critics everywhere thanks to the great sensitivity and virtuosity with which he interprets the performed works. He records for Warner Classics, and his debut album, Roma Travestita, was released in 2022.

The concert will open with Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in G major Hob. I:8 “Le soir”, or rather its first movement. It is the eighth work of this genre in his oeuvre. It was composed in 1761 for the orchestra of Prince Paul II Anton Esterházy as part of an orchestral trilogy – each of the three symphonies was dedicated to a different time of day. The motet Exsultate, jubilate KV 165/158a is a work by the second of the Viennese Classicists, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The seventeen-year-old composer wrote it in 1773 in Milan with the intention of having it performed by the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini. During the concert, a later version of the composition will be presented, completed in Salzburg in 1779. The motet consists of four movements. It opens with a joyful fragment in a fast tempo, followed by a recitative and a lyrical Andante. The most famous movement of the piece is the virtuoso Alleluia that crowns the whole. The Adagio and Fugue in G minor KV 404a for violin, viola and cello testify to Mozart’s fascination with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The basis for the second part is the Fugue in F sharp minor BWV 883 by the Leipzig cantor. The melancholic aria Betracht dies Herz und frage mich comes from the cantata Grabmusik KV 42/35a written in 1767. In this piece, the distraught Soul seeks consolation after the death of Christ – it comes in this aria, in which the Angel answers the Soul’s call. The work of Luigi Caruso, active at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Kapellmeister of Perugia Cathedral, is currently much less known than the works of Haydn or Mozart. De Sá will perform the aria In mezzo a mille affanni from the Il Fanatico per la musica by Caruso.

Domenico Cimarosa is a composer remembered for his extraordinary talent for comedy. However, during the October concert, we will hear a fragment of his funeral mass – Preces meae, from the Requiem in G minor from 1787. The works of Luigi Cherubini, who was born in Florence but settled in Paris in his youth and was associated with this city throughout his long life, will also be performed. The opera seria Mesenzio, re d’Etruria was written during the artist’s stay in Florence, when he was twenty-two. De Sá chose the recitative No non cercar per ora from this work and the aria La gran vendetta ancora that follows it. The delicate, lyrical and melodious Andante from Mozart’s Symphony in D major KV 95/73n will serve as an intermezzo between the vocal movements. The composer Felice Alessandri travelled extensively throughout Europe. He was born in Rome, but also worked in Berlin, London, Paris, Sankt Petersburg and Turin. His rich oeuvre includes over thirty operas. De Sá will sing the aria Se possono tanto due luci luci vezzose from Alessandro nell’Indie. The atmospheric Overture from L’isle déserte is the work of the composer, violinist and conductor Franz Ignaz Beck, whose music enjoyed great popularity in France, where he lived and composed. The crowning of this programme, rich in emotional contrasts, will be the performance of the recitative Voi sacre piante and the aria Deh! soccori o padre from Andromeda. Its author is the German composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt.