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Benjamin Bernheim’s new album Boulevard des Italiens documents more than a hundred years of Italian operatic music in France. Music stretching from Spontini’s La Vestale to Mascagni’s Amica – all sung in French – receives gold-star treatment from Bernheim, a tenor ideally placed to sing this repertoire in his native language. As he explains, “The aim was really to show the history of the French language in opera houses in Paris by way of these Italian composers who brought their pieces there. With the Opéra Garnier at one end, and the Opéra-Comique at the other, the Boulevard des Italiens is where it all happened.” Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Paris was the operatic capital of Europe. From Cherubini to Mascagni, Italian composers in particular were drawn to the city with its cosmopolitan outlook and opera-loving audiences. This resulted in an exciting and productive mutual exchange between the French and Italian theatrical traditions. Almost without exception, works were staged in French, whatever their country of origin, and in adapting their music to work with the sonorities of the French language, Italian composers rose to new levels of melodic creativity. On Boulevard des Italiens, Bernheim performs a representative selection of their operatic calling cards, having turned to the Venice-based Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de musique romantique française for advice on repertoire. As he explains, in addition to giving inspired ideas and suggestions, the organisation also “helped us enormously, doing amazing work on editing not just the vocal scores, but the orchestral ones as well”. The recording sessions with conductor Frédéric Chaslin and the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna took place in April 2021 – “just as the world was opening up again”, recalls Bernheim. “It was a wonderful feeling, both personally and musically,” he adds. “We were literally immersed in Italian sonorities.”