Since founding the early music ensemble Le Poème Harmonique in 1997, Vincent Dumestre has brought Palmeritan puppeteers to perform a forgotten opera about the mad Roman emperor Caligula; collaborated with circus players on 17th-century church music; and invited a diverse array of contemporary theater directors and choreographers to stage, among other things, a Spanish Baroque zarzuela, a play by Molière, and a reconstruction of the commedia dell’arte. In May, Dumestre released a recording of the wedding mass of Louis XIV; this fall, he directed a series of concerts with mezzo-sopranos Isabelle Druet and Stéphanie d’Oustrac (Poulenc’s great-niece) in a wide-ranging program of music from Monteverdi to the Roaring Twenties. Dumestre’s latest album with Le Poème Harmonique, “Nisi Dominus,” features mezzo-soprano Eva Zaïcik in a selection of music from Venetian religious processions and a girls’ orphanage and conservatory, L’Ospedale della Pietà, for which Vivaldi composed his famous setting of the 127th Psalm.
I spoke with Dumestre shortly after he directed a performance of the same selection for the Staatsoper Berlin’s December 2022 Barocktage (Baroque Days). We talked about his unusual musical trajectory, questions of historical context in early music, and some of his upcoming projects. These include a new version of the lyric tragedy by Lully, “Armide”; new recitals organized around music from the Roaring Twenties in Paris; a concert version of Cavalli’s “L’Egisto”; a Baroque zarzuela, “Coronis”; Monteverdi’s “Selva Morale”; and an unpublished opera by Galuppi—“on the theme of gender!”—“L’Uomo-Femmina.” Dumestre will return to Berlin on May 4, 2023 for a performance of Allegri’s “Miserere” at the Philharmonie, and looks forward to performing for the “marvelous German public.”
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