Amor's delight: French ensemble to present Baroque songs of love

Not interested in the Super Bowl pregame windup? Thinking about Valentine’s Day but haven’t found the right mood for it?

What you may need is a healthy, tasteful helping of the Baroque. That is, mostly operatic music from the early 18th century, when love was a matter of conversation, costume and Cupidic intervention, not a swipe on a smartphone app.

This Sunday afternoon at the Royal Poinciana Plaza, a young French performing ensemble will present an hour of song and instrumental music from French, German, Italian and English composers. The group, Fuoco Obbligato, is a chamber music offshoot of Opera Fuoco, a Parisian opera company founded in 2003 by David Stern, chief conductor of the Palm Beach Opera.

Soprano Juliette Tacchino and tenor Guy Elliott will be joined by violinist Katharina Wolff, violist Elizabeth Gex, cellist Jérôme Huile, flutist Jean Bregnac and harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss. Wolff, who is Stern’s wife, leads the ensemble.

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The program, called "Amor diletto," includes two arias from cantatas by J.S. Bach (one of them being the well-known “Mein gläubiges Herze”), plus arias from operas by André Campra, Antonio Caldara, Reinhard Keiser, Benedetto Marcello and Antonio Vivaldi.

In addition, there are excerpts from Jean-Phillipe Rameau’s cantata “L’Impatience”; two arias by Handel, one from his liturgical drama “La Resurrezione” and the pastoral ode “L’Allegro, Il Pensoroso ed Il Moderato”; and “Softly rise, o Southern breeze,” from “Solomon,” a serenade by the English composer William Boyce.

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Interspersed throughout the selections will be movements from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, in a chamber music reduction; the suite closes with the familiar “Badinerie,” one of the best-known of all flute solos (here called the traverso, the name for a Baroque flute).

While much of this music is regularly heard in early music events, a sizable portion features rarely heard works by some of the most important composers of their era. That includes Antonio Vivaldi, whose "Four Seasons" is a staple of classical music programs everywhere, but whose large output of opera is almost never encountered by the majority of concertgoers.

Stern will introduce the program, which begins at 4 p.m. in the Kirkman Fellowship Hall at the Royal Poinciana Chapel, 60 Cocoanut Row. The concert is free of charge and tickets are not required. For more information, call 561-655-4212 or visit royalpoincianachapel.org.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Royal Poinciana Chapel to host free concert of Baroque music of love