Rediscovering Mozart: How Soprano Marie-Eve Munger Is Creating a Fuller Picture of the Composer on Her New Album, Maestrino Mozart
Marie-Eve Munger
In early 2012, the coloratura soprano Marie-Eve Munger received an offer every opera singer dreams of — a lead role in a Mozart opera.
But there was a catch. It wasn't a role in Don Giovanni, or The Marriage of Figaro, or any of the popular Mozart operas performed every season across the globe. The opera was Il sogno di Scipione, which Mozart wrote when he was just 16 years old.
Munger had never heard of the opera before, but learning and performing it that year piqued her curiosity. How could Mozart write a compelling theatrical work like this at such a young age? And why was no one performing this music?
Now, a decade later, that interest in exploring Mozart's early operas has blossomed into a new album from the French-Canadian soprano, Maestrino Mozart — a program of rarely heard arias Mozart composed between the ages of 10 and 16, which Munger performs with Les Boréades de Montréal under the baton of Philippe Bourque.
"What I discovered in Il sogno di Scipione were incredible moments of musical depth and dramatic sense, an incredible mastery of the bel canto," Munger says on the latest episode of the Classical Post podcast. "Even at that early age, he was able to really capture the essence of what it is to be human."
Over the course of the 12 arias featured on Maestrino Mozart, Munger shows us how the popular assumption that Mozart's earliest works are too simple or juvenile is just not the case. In these teenage works, one can clearly hear the maturity the composer would develop over the next 20 years.
"[This music] sheds an interesting light on his later works as well. You can hear the seeds of Giovanni. You can hear the seeds of the Queen of the Night and Pamina. All of that is really in there already, and you can hear it. It's a very interesting way to rediscover a composer we think we know."
In this discussion, we talk more about the new album and the parallels Munger sees between performing classical music and gastronomy. Plus, she shares how her yoga practice helps her cultivate her voice, the iPad app that's transformed her life as a traveling musician, and her pick for the best burger joint in New York City.
Listen to Maestrino Mozart on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you download or stream music.
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