Le Nouvel Opéra and Les Boréades de Montréal have assembled an exceptional group of artists for the first-ever recording of Nicandro e Fileno, a pastoral opera by Paolo Lorenzani (1640-1713) first performed in 1681 before Louis XIV at the palace of Fontainebleau.

Paolo Lorenzani studied composition with Orazio Benevoli. He became in 1675 Maestro di Cappella at the cathedral of Messina, in Sicily. Nicandro e Fileno was the first Italian-language opera to be staged in France since Francesco Cavalli’s Ercole amante, which was written to celebrate the marriage of the king in 1660. The manuscript of Nicandro e Fileno is conserved in the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris. Canadian musicologist Albert La France prepared the critical edition of Nicandro e Fileno for the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Thanks to the initiative of Suzie LeBlanc and Francis Colpron, this opera was restored to life for this recording and for the 2017 performance in Montreal, with stage direction by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière.

The ensemble Les Boréades was founded in 1991 by Francis Colpron and specialises in performing Baroque repertoire with an approach that is authentic both in terms of period performance practice and the use of period instruments.

Cast:
- Filli: Suzie Leblanc (soprano)
- Clori: Pascale Beaudin (soprano)
- Lidio: Philippe Gagné (tenor)
- Nicandro: Nils Brown (tenor)
- Eurillo: Dominic Côté (baritone)
- Fileno: Jean-Marc Salzmann (baritone)