After two decades in which every corner of baroque and classical opera would seem to have been explored, Simon Mayr (1763-1845) remains rather scantily represented on disc. Mayr, who was born in Bavaria but settled in Italy, began as a composer of sacred music but soon switched to opera, writing more than 70 stage works in which he fused the classicism of Haydn and Mozart with the lyrical vocal writing of 18th-century Italy. He’s often seen as a precursor of Rossini, but only a handful of his operas have been recorded, most of which have been released by Naxos.
Premiered at Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 1794, Saffo was Mayr’s first opera, in two acts, which tells the story of the poet Saffo’s love for the hunter Phaon. It’s a well made, well behaved score, but with occasional touches of genuine originality, especially in the scoring – later in his life Mayr would write a treatise on orchestration – although the characters tend to be off-the-peg opera seria types. The role of Phaon was written for a castrato, and it’s sung here by the soprano Jaewon Yun. The title role gets the main share of the opera’s big moments and Andrea Lauren Brown makes the most of them, though the performance under Franz Hauk is sometimes a bit too dutiful.
