Spyres and a storm at sea

The next trailer in our Si gira section is a storm at sea. It is sung by Michael Spyres, one of the most remarkable tenors of today, with the baroque ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro and its concertmaster Zefira Valova. The concert Tenorissimo took place on 30 September 2026 in the Concert Hall of the Slovak Philharmonic at the 61st Bratislava Music Festival. In the trailer you hear the aria “Solcar pensa un mar sicuro” from the opera Arminio by Johann Adolph Hasse.

Tenore assoluto

The baroque era knew several types of high male voice, and the most accomplished of them, with a range of more than three octaves, were called tenore assoluto. It was they who gradually eclipsed the fame of the castrati and opened the way for tenors to take on the leading heroic roles. In the booklet of his recording Contra-Tenor (Erato, 2023) Spyres names them: the German Anton Raaff, the Frenchman Pierre de Jélyotte and the Venetian Angelo Maria Amorevoli. The Bratislava programme drew on this recording – including three arias that the recording brought to a modern premiere: by Galuppi, Latilla and Hasse himself.

A storm at sea

Johann Adolph Hasse, born in Bergedorf near Hamburg, was called “the most Italian of the Germans”. He studied in Naples, his opera Artaserse brought him European fame in Venice in 1730, and that same year he married the celebrated prima donna Faustina Bordoni. Soon afterwards he became Kapellmeister at the court of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden.

Arminio was written for Dresden in 1745. Hasse composed the aria “Solcar pensa un mar sicuro” – “He thinks he sails a safe sea” – which opens the first act, specifically for Amorevoli, who arrived in Dresden that year. It is a so-called aria di paragone, an aria built on a simile: the character Segeste uses the image of a storm at sea to warn against relying too much on calm waters. The same concert also included Porpora's aria on the same subject, in which Segeste instead warns someone who has never experienced a storm.

Who sings

Michael Spyres comes from the Ozarks region of Missouri. His voice is often described as a baritenor – it combines the fullness of a baritone with a tenor's top – which is why his repertoire ranges from baroque through bel canto to Wagner. In 2024 he made his debuts as Lohengrin and as Siegmund at Bayreuth, and in the 2025/2026 season he sang his first Tristan at the Metropolitan Opera. This was his first appearance at the Bratislava Music Festival – and the first time in his career that the tenore assoluto devoted a programme entirely to the baroque.

Il Pomo d'Oro was founded in 2012 and is one of the leading ensembles in historically informed performance. In Bratislava the players were Zefira Valova (first violin, concertmaster), Lucia Giraudo (second violin), Giulio D'Alessio (viola), Martin Egidi (cello), Jonathan Alvarez (double bass), Miguel Rincón (theorbo) and Maria Shabashova (harpsichord).

The whole concert

The programme featured arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Galuppi, Latilla, Rameau, Porpora, Sarro and Mazzoni and instrumental works by Vivaldi, Galuppi and Sammartini; the encore was Gluck. You can find the complete recording in the Concert Archive and on the concert page in the BHS archive. You can also play Hasse's aria in full, right from its beginning.

The trailer and the concert recording were produced by the StreamTeam of the Slovak Philharmonic – Andrej Osvald (lighting, sound, cameras, editing) and Marek Piaček (direction, post-production). The text on the music is based on Andrej Šuba's programme note for the concert. Photographs by Alexander Trizuljak.