Johann Simon Mayr’s delightful two-act opera Saffo, here receiving its first recording, features a love triangle between the eponymous poetess (soprano Andrea Lauren Brown) her former lover Faone (soprano Jaewon Yun), whom Saffo still desires but who still pines for his late wife, and the poet Alceo (tenor Markus Schäfer), in love with Saffo. Set in and around a Greek temple near the Rock of Leucas, from which dejected lovers are prone to throw themselves, the opera includes a host of other characters such as the oracular priestess Amfizione (mezzo
Marie Sande Papenmeyer).

The first of 70 operas by the Bavarian composer (1763-1845), Saffo premiered at La Fenice in 1794. As Marion Englhart writes in her booklet note, “Perhaps Mayr’s musical achievement was not least to combine innovations from the so-called Viennese School of Classicism with the Italian ideal of bel canto.” But it is his peculiar ear for orchestral colour, which comes to the forefront in this fine recording under Franz Hauk on Naxos.

To sample the aforementioned qualities, one need look no further than Saffo’s first aria L’onda del mar, che al vento, where she compares her sufferings to a breaking wave. The undulating melodies and the colourful orchestration are attractive and expressive; Saffo’s inner turmoil is thus unmistakable.