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- 06 Set 2026
Francesco Cavalli – “Sospiri Di Foco” – Aria for Menelao from “Elena” (1659) – I Act III Scene.
Luca Casagrande – Orion Music Int. Studio Anthology “Sospiri Di Foco – Baroque Opera And Chambers Arias” C-LC046 – ℗ 2026
Recorded at the Orion Music Int. Studios – Berlin (Germany)
Mix and mastering at the Union Recording Studios – Los Angeles (California – US)
© Luca Casagrande
Baritone – Luca Casagrande
Orchestra – Scarlatti Camera Ensemble
Cover – Luca Casagrande – Michele Bommassar
Painting – Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) – 1597 – “The Musicians” – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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“Sospiri Di Foco”
Lyrics by Giovanni Faustini (1615 – 1651) and Nicolò Minato (1627 – 1698)
Music by Francesco Cavalli (1602 – 1676)
Sospiri di foco,
Che l’aure inflammate,
Leggeri volate
Intorno al mio bene.
E l’aspre mie pene
Narrategli un poco.
Sospiri, sospiri di foco,
Sospiri, sospiri di foco!
Aurette leggere,
Che udite il mio duolo,
Portatevi a volo
Al sen di chi adoro,
E dite ch’io moro
In doglie severe,
Aurette, aurette leggere,
aurette, aurette leggere.
“‘Elena’ is a 1659 dramma per musica in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Cavalli. It is set to a libretto initiated by Giovanni Faustini (who died in 1651) and completed by Nicolò Minato, and it was first performed in Venice at the Teatro San Cassiano (the dedication is 26 December 1659). Elena was revived in 1661 in Palermo but then not heard again until 2013, at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.”
Menelaus, in the Cavalli’s melodram, is a young Achaean prince, in love with the protagonist, Helen, a woman of rare beauty and, in Homer, the cause of the Trojan War. Menelaus, to get closer to Helen, dresses as a woman to introduce himself to serving her by pretending to be an Amazon. After a thousand events, both comical and tragic, Menelaus reveals his identity and marries Helen.
The role of Menelaus originally seems to have been entrusted to a female voice, but, by its very nature, it can also be entrusted to a male voice, which is sufficiently “light”.