María Cristina KIEHR

Soprano, co-founder of the Concerto Soave ensemble

To hear María Cristina Kiehr sing pre-Baroque Italian music is to plunge, through the magic of her timbre and the eloquence of her phrasing, into a universe where the splendor of the texts is sublimated by an expressive art of declamation. (24 hours)

Trained at the Schola Cantorum in Basel under René Jacobs, María Cristina Kiehr was very early invited by the greatest chefs (Philippe Herreweghe, Franz Bruggen, Jordi Savall, Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt ...) and the most prestigious groups ( Hesperion XXI, Concerto Köln, Ensemble 415, Musical Seminario, Vocal Concerto, Elyma, ...). Apart from her participation in productions of operas (Orontea de Cesti in Basel, Incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi in Montpellier, Dorilla de Vivaldi in Nice ...), she travels around the world (in Europe, Japan, Australia, in Central and South America ...) and has participated in more than a hundred recordings.
But her double passion for 17th century Italian polyphony and monody fully blossomed with Concerto Soave, of which she is a co-founder.
María Cristina Kiehr reveals her talents as a storyteller, endeavoring to make the slightest intentions of the "new music" monodic (la nuova musica). This bears witness to a prosperous period when the greatest poets (Tasso, Marino, Petrarch ...) were set to music by the greatest composers (Monteverdi, d'India, Mazzochi ...) and where sacred music addressed the senses and the heart with the same rhetoric as secular music. It allows us to discover not only a unique singer, but also an accomplished artist.