Raffaele Pe &
The Lyre of Orpheus
Founded in 2015, La Lira di Orfeo, a collective of musicians, artists, and researchers, with whom Raffaele Pe is ushering in a true revolution in the world of baroque music, presenting a repertoire that is constantly being rediscovered. From the creation of new critical editions to the planning of performances, Raffaele Pe and the collective move effortlessly between the arts to create performances that look to the past with a contemporary sensibility.
Following brilliant debuts at the Berlin Philharmonie for Deutschland Radio Kultur and at the Theater an der Wien, as well as invitations to the Wigmore Hall, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Handel Festival in Halle and Göttingen, La Lira di Orfeo is now internationally recognized as an authoritative young Italian voice for the interpretation of vocal music between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Recent productions include Handel's Acis, Galatea, and Polifemo, the first reconstruction of the Senesino version created in collaboration with the Teatro Municipale di Piacenza; Alessandro Scarlatti's Griselda, 300 years after its premiere; Porpora's L'Angelica for the 47th Festival della Valle D'Itria; and the modern revival of Porpora's Orfeo, composed for Farinelli in 1736, which recently enjoyed great success at the Theater an der Wien.
The group's most recent discography includes The Medici Castrato (Glossa), Alessandro Scarlatti. Concerti Sacri (Amadeus), and Giulio Cesare. A Baroque Hero (Glossa), which won the Italian Music Critics' Abbiati Award for Best Recording and was named one of the best recording projects of 2018 by the "Times" and "Die Welt." In September 2021, the ensemble released "Aci, Galatea e Polifemo" on Glossa, a modern reconstruction of the version written for the castrato singer Senesino in the role of Acis.
Since December 2015 it has been the ensemble in residence at the Music Hall of the Maria Cosway Foundation in Lodi, with the aim of enhancing and passing on the cultural and musical legacy of Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760-1838) from an international perspective.
He is a guest of major theaters such as the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin, the Theater an der Wien, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Opéra National du Rhin and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and collaborates with conductors and directors of the caliber of Jordi Savall, René Jacobs, John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, Giovanni
Antonini, Graham Vick, Claus Guth, Pierluigi Pizzi and Damiano Michieletto.
She completed her musical studies in Brescia, graduating with top marks, cum laude, and special mention in violin and viola. Alongside her traditional study of the repertoire, she explored performance practice from the Baroque to the Romantic period, adopting a historically informed approach with Chiara Banchini at the Schola Cantorum Basilensis (Basel), Luigi Mangiocavallo in Rome, and Enrico Onofri. She was selected and won competitions with several symphony orchestras and opera houses in Italy. In 2004, she joined La Scala, where she remained continuously until 2016, when she won the competition for music director of the Tafelmusik Orchestra in Toronto and moved to Canada. She was invited to serve as concertmaster and first violinist by many of the world's leading ensembles for baroque repertoire. From 2017 to 2021, she was busy performing concerts, recordings, teaching, and opera productions. He teaches at numerous institutions, including, notably, the prestigious Juilliard School in New York, where he was invited again the following year to conduct the school's baroque orchestra. For over three years, he taught alongside Stefano Montanari at the Claudio Abbado Civic School of Music in Milan, and in 2015, he taught free baroque violin at the Luca Marenzio Conservatory in Brescia. In November 2024, he began teaching baroque violin and viola at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
Elisa Citterio
