• Tracks

Northern Europe was a fertile ground for lyrical music. It has borrowed many memorable historical figures, but is also indebted to it for many masterpieces by Baroque composers. Handel and Bach come to mind, of course, but we would be forgetting the Heinichen, Schürmann, Keiser and Telemann, whose brilliant opera music is so rarely performed. Many of them have portrayed monarchs, terrible or majestic, in their operatic works - roles that, unlike their southern colleagues, the composers of the Septentrion do not hesitate to entrust to lower voices. The baritone Tomas Kral, who has been performing brilliantly for several years on international stages, takes on these different roles with equal ease, sometimes portraying the torment of a remorseful Nero, the despair of Sigebert or the ridiculous fatuity of Telemann's imaginary tyrant, Damon. Mixing key arias of the repertoire and little-known treasures, the young baritone and the musicians of the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra offer a high-flying recital, between virtuosity and emotion.