Presto Editor's Choice
September 2022

Bruno de Sá (sopranist), Il Pomo d’Oro, Francesco Corti

Scarlatti, A: Dì che sogno, o che deliro (from Griselda)
Scarlatti, A: Mi rivedi, o selva ombrosa (from Griselda)
Vinci, Leonardo: Lascierò d'essere spietata (from Il Farnace)
Vivaldi: Per noi soave e bella (from Il Giustino)
Vivaldi: Senza l'amato ben (from Il Giustino)
Capua, R: Nell'orror di notte oscura (from Vologeso, re de' Parti)
Arena: Del sen gl'ardori nessun mi vanti (from Achille in Sciro)
Galuppi: Qual pellegrino errante (from Evergete)
Cocchi: Timida pastorella (from Adelaide)
Cocchi: Nobil onda (from Adelaide)
Conforto: Padre, germano...Vadasi pure a morte (from Livia Claudia Vestale)
Fajer: Grato oblio, soave pace (from Pompeo Magno in Armenia)
Piccinni: Furie di donna irata (from La Buona figluola)

Bruno de Sá’s Erato debut, Roma travestita, could hardly be more striking. The young Brazilian singer – a rare example of a male soprano – explores a period when women were banned from the public stages of Rome and men assumed female operatic roles. Moreover, eight of the 13 arias on the album are receiving their world premiere recording. Opera magazine has described Bruno de Sá as “astounding … with a high register of soprano purity. A true male soprano able to command thrillingly ringing tones …” In partnership with Il Pomo d’Oro and conductor Francesco Corti he performs arias from the 18th century: by Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Vinci, Galuppi and Piccinni, and by the rarely heard Capua, Arena, Cocchi, Conforto and Garcìa Fajer. On stage, Bruno de Sá has already sung such roles as Sesto in both Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, Barbarina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, and the Little Mermaid in a new Hans Christian Andersen opera by Jherek Bischoff. “My goal is to sing what my voice allows me to sing,” he says. “It doesn’t matter which boxes it ticks or which gender it is.”

"Extending up to an easy high D (and he has more in reserve above that!), the Brazilian male soprano's voice is an extraordinary instrument, with never a hint of strain up top and plenty of colour in the middle and lower regions. The flurries of stratospheric staccatos in arias by Vivaldi, Galuppi and Piccinni are executed with audacious ease, but de Sá is no mere canary: he has a real gift for declamatory drama and pathos as well as for pyrotechnics, and sounds fully inside every character in this recital of Italian baroque rarities." - Katherine Cooper, Presto Music, September 2022.