About us
In 2015 Raffaele Pe created La Lira di Orfeo, a collective of musicians, artists and researches whose efforts to put forward continuously rediscovered repertoires represent a true baroque music revolution.
From new critical editions to new staged productions, Raffaele Pe and his collective move boldly between the arts to create shows that look to the past with a modern touch.
Described by the «Times» as "a baroque star", countertenor Raffaele Pe covers a wide musical repertoire that goes from Recitar cantando to contemporary opera.
Some of the venues he regularly performs in include the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Theater an der Wien, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Opéra National du Rhine, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Raffaele collaborates with conductors and stage directors such as Jordi Savall, John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, Giovanni Antonini,
Graham Vick, Claus Guth, Pierluigi Pizzi, and Damiano Michieletto.
Following its brilliant debuts at the Berlin’s Philharmonie for the Deutschland Radio Kultur and at the Theater an der Wien, and with performances at the Wigmore Hall, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Handel Festival in Halle and in Göttingen, La Lira di Orfeo is internationally recognized as a young and authoritative Italian voice in the interpretation of Seventeenth- and the Eighteenth-Centuries vocal music.
Some of its latest musical efforts include a collaboration with the Teatro Municipale of Piacenza for the production of Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo in what is the first reconstructed version for the Senesino; a production of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Griselda, 300 years after its first performance; Porpora’s Angelica, for the 47th Festival della Valle D’Itria; and the modern-day revival of Porpora’s Orfeo, written in 1736 for Farinelli, a show that was recently welcomed with great success at the Theater an der Wien.
The ensemble’s latest recordings include The Medici Castrato (Glossa), Alessandro Scarlatti, Concerti Sacri (Amadeus), and Giulio Cesare. A baroque Hero (Glossa). The latter was granted the Italian Music Critics Abbiati Prize as Best Album and elected by the «Times» and «Die Welt» as one of 2018’s best recording projects. In September 2021, under the label Glossa, the ensemble published Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, a modern reconstruction of the version for the castrato Senesino, who had played the role of Aci.
From December 2015 La Lira di Orfeo is the resident ensemble at the Sala della Musica of the Maria Cosway Foundation in Lodi. Its aim is to enhance and spread the cultural and musical heritage of Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760-1838) internationally.
