Portrait of Lea Desandre | concerti.de

Lea Desandre has chosen the risk as a freelance mezzo-soprano – and can now look forward to engagements at the largest opera houses.

IYour wave: a small gesture, don’t be shy. An interview via video chat is scheduled for the first time in Advent at 2 p.m. – travel restrictions and the strict lockdown for opera and concerts do not allow a physical encounter. The French-Italian singer is currently in Normandy and sang Berlioz ‘”Les nuits d’été” the night before. The cycle is not a significant oeuvre for the 27-year-old, who is far more familiar with the Belle Époque around Reynaldo Hahn and early music than the high romanticism. For three years she has been increasing the curiosity for her performances, not always in central roles, but all the more emphatically. High point so far: At the 2020 Salzburg Festival, after “L’incoronazione di Poppea” and “Orphée aux enfers” in the acclaimed production of “Così fan tutte”, she received her first leading role – in the Great Festival Hall. Desandres Despina was not a cheeky, lively and profitable domestic servant. Instead, the directing psychologist Christof Loy developed a self-contained female figure with her, who shone just as much as the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, played by Elsa Dreisig and Marianne Crebassa, when young people were searching for true emotions. “Despina is experienced in life. The game is amazingly deep, ”explains Desandre. So she shapes a completely different role profile than the silver-voiced Kathleen Battle, who also made the leap to international fame with Despina in Salzburg.

Determined in an unpretentious way

Lea Desandre’s apartment in Rouen is simple. “Here I can concentrate very well on the next projects, meet friends and bundle energies.” She says what she thinks, does not repeat itself. And she looks purposeful in an unpretentious way. She absolutely needs this inner security, because she sings a lot from the repertoire for which most music colleges have graduated: light soprano, lyrical mezzo-soprano – extreme coloratura are rare, the heroic characters still have some time. The page Cherubino in “Le nozze di Figaro” or the god of love Amor in Gluck’s “Orfeo et Euridice”, currently important roles for Desandre, are often cast by young ensemble members from their own ranks, even at large opera houses.

Does she feel more comfortable in soprano heights or mezzo? “I don’t have to commit myself to a specific role as in fixed contracts, because I’m a freelance. I am looking for the requirements and roles that are right for me, the dimensions of which affect me. ”Lea received advice on these criteria from Joyce DiDonato after a concert she attended as a 16-year-old. She also gave her the warning that the extraordinarily young singing student must have fun alongside her notoriously insecure career.

Lea Desandre as Despina in “Così fan tutte” at the Salzburg Festival 2020

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Without panic and fear of the future

Desandre discovered and developed her true voice and artistic personality with the incorruptibly competent Sara Mingardo in Venice. Her singing lessons began when Lea – she gestures at the huge pile with both hands – had to look through tons of sheet music with works that were hardly familiar to her at the time. From this she should choose which pieces she wanted to work on. “Composers mostly wrote for parts of the intended cast. Today we have every opportunity to choose our repertoire ourselves. “

That is why Lea Desandre does not differentiate between the soprano, contralto and mezzo boundaries that are still valid for the generations of Frederica von Stade, Agnes Baltsa and Brigitte Fassbaender and are only broken through in exceptional cases. She admires the gigantic artistic spectrum of Cecilia Bartoli, at whose side she will sing in Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito” at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. “After Sara’s crash course in repertoire selection, I realized, for example, that I feel better in pieces and parts for Farinelli than in compositions for Caffarelli, to put it simply.”

It shows the piano reduction of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” over the camera. As Idamante, she will appear in the production at the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, which has been postponed due to the pandemic. What do the compulsory breaks during Corona mean for you? “I read, stabilized my balance and prepared the next projects.” As it seems to be her method: interested and alert, without panic or fear of the future. Sara Mingardo and Vivicagenau also emphasized several times: “You can be even better if there is another active life for you in addition to your inner calling as a singer.” She heeded this advice, which has meanwhile been heard by so many experienced colleagues.

No differences between heart and mind

Although there would have been many occasions in the conversation, Lea does not use words such as “art”, “future”, “success”, “celebrity” and “career”. She owes her good presence on phonograms (her new album will be released in April) and on social networks only to her vocal achievements and the successes with the audience. Has she received a lot of direct requests for appearances, especially in the last few months? Lea denies that. In a filigree solo program with the lutenist Thomas Dunford, she lined up melodies from the Renaissance, Baroque and Belle Époque salons at the Festival de Maguelone 2019. These sounded almost like contemporary chansons for a chill summer evening – only finer and more pensive. Of course, Desandre has the virtuoso condition for Rossini roles like Rosina in “Il barbiere di Siviglia” or comedies like Cimarosa’s “L’impresario in angustie”, which she sang at the Paris Conservatory. But her main focus at the moment is on the soft coloratura of Handel and Vivaldi, exquisite tone poems from France and a lot of that music that makes no distinction between heart and mind.