PRESS REVIEW
BOOKS

VENICE, THE AWAKENING OF THE BAROQUE
 
Olivier Lexa, former director of the Palazzetto Bru Zane and founder of the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, shares with us through a clever little book his deep familiarity with the city where the "public opera” was born. […] The writer never lingers or takes the tone of a schoolmaster, preferring to set the scene, evoke a particular painting or habit of the time, revive in all its vitality this artistic melting pot where the carnival reigned from November to May.
Olivier Rouvière, Diapason, October 2011
 
On my trip there last week, I picked up a copy of Olivier Lexa’s new book Venise, l’éveil du baroque, a kind of walking tour of the Venetian musical Baroque. I had great fun consulting Lexa’s book as I ambled about, listening for echoes of Venice’s many golden ages.
Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise, 29 June 2011


FRANCESCO CAVALLI
 
The Cavalli we've been waiting for! […] Signed by Olivier Lexa, historian, musicologist in love with Venice and Francesco Cavalli, this is a new gem. Small by the format of the series, its content is rich. The composer's biography and work shed light on each other and strengthen our knowledge, but above all our desire to discover even more. […] We can read the biography like a novel. The synthesis is brilliant, remarkably documented, dense and fascinating. […] Despite the conciseness of the work, the painting of Venetian life, its intrigues, the birth of public opera, of which Cavalli will be the first beneficiary, in every sense of the word, the process of creating a lyrical work, go beyond the anecdote to take on a historical dimension. […] The chronological list of operas, a selective bibliography and an index which complete this work make it the essential reference from now on.
Yvan Beuvard, 24 November 2014, Forumopera
 
Olivier Lexa excels in portraying the development and competition of Venetian private paying theaters, the first in history, and in evoking the businessman side of Cavalli. The author's familiarity with the places, as well as his own experience of cultural management, make these aspects of the story particularly appealing. But it is of course Cavalli’s work that primarily fires Olivier Lexa. […] This book remains one of the richest in content and most interesting of an uneven collection.
Thierry Guyenne, Opéra Magazine, November 2014
 
Here then is a gap filled and in a very nice way, with this dense but alert little book, never pedantic despite the very large amount of information it provides.
L’Avant-scène opéra, November 2014
 
This biography of Pier Fracesco Caletti dit Cavalli fills a sidereal void. […] The pen is alert and the subject is flourishing.
Sophie Roughol, Diapason, November 2014
 
With this captivating historical and police investigation presented in three acts and based on the study of the original manuscripts kept at the Biblioteca Marciana, Olivier Lexa (founder of the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music) delivers the very first biography of the choirmaster of the Basilica of San Marco.
La Lettre du Musicien, 1st November 2014
 
The clear, dense and concise work offered to us by Olivier Lexa is remarkable, well documented. It is the first written in French devoted to our Venetian, and it is a masterstroke. A lover of 17th century Venice and Cavalli in particular, the author excels at describing the man and his music in the context of a life like no other. […] The creative process, carefully analyzed, is the subject of a convincing description. […] To recommend without reserve to the music lover as to the specialist, to the amateur as to the musician or the musicologist, it is a treat.
Musicologie.org, 11 November 2014
 
Olivier Lexa's book, written in a light tone but in a serious manner, excels at educating and entertaining us at the same time.
Frederick Casadesus, Mediapart, 29 September 2014
 
If the lyric works of Cavalli have not all been represented and recorded today, our knowledge of this composer has been refined, in particular thanks to the work of Oliver Lexa who this yea authoredr the first biography of the Venetian composer.
François Hudry, Quobuz, October 2014


THE MUSIC IN VENICE
 
A fine scholar, as erudite as he is enthusiastic, Frenchman Olivier Lexa, who has been living in Venice for six years, is keen to share his passions. […] His energy and rigor put balm in the hearts of Venetians discouraged by the mercantile drifts of mass tourism. […] After a biography of Francesco Cavalli, Lexa does it again with La Musique à Venise, a magnificently illustrated book. […] Superb!
Anne Dastakian, Marianne, 18 December 2015
 
But Venice is also a city to be heard, and this precious album signed Olivier Lexa proves it to us, in a harmonious balance between a competent text and a dream iconography. […] One of the virtues of the book, written with an alert and sensitive hand, is to bring to life the deep intricacies between music and the other arts, magnified in the opera: there, poetry, sets and costumes do one with the score, to the spectator's greatest sensual satisfaction.
Emmanuelle Giuliani, La Croix, 26 November 2015
 
In this beautiful book, historian, musician and opera director Olivier Lexa explores the history of music in Venice. […] A rich iconography combining contemporary photos and archive images make this erudite but accessible book an ideal Christmas gift for music lovers, baroque and lovers of the Serenissima.
G. Ti., Libération, 19 December 2015
 
Olivier Lexa is an essential writer for those who want to deepen – or discover under the most illuminating light – the musical life of the Serenissima from the Seicento. To his two previous works, the "touristic-historical" essay Venise, l'éveil du baroque and the biography Francesco Cavalli (Actes Sud), is now added to this art book which immediately takes the status of reference. Page after page, the eye as well as the mind are delighted by a sumptuous iconography and elegantly laid out. […] Why Venice? Why did she achieve this unique aesthetic fusion of form and content on her own, bringing music to her architecture while representing her musical life? Olivier Lexa's text answers this question in a brilliant and erudite way – not an arid and austere scholarship, but a science which sharpens curiosity, builds bridges between ideas and eras, stimulates more than it intimidates. […] The success of this work is that it does not only make us understand, but also – and above all – feel the whimsical (dis)measure.
Chantal Cazaux, L’Avant-scène Opéra, January 2016
 
Olivier Lexa has signed off "La Musique à Venise" not only a beautiful book, but also a learned and captivating work on the baroque revolution. […] This is certainly a "beautiful book" […] but it deserves better than a lazy consultation or a high place on the coffee table. You have to read the text of Olivier Lexa, this Frenchman living in Venice where he founded the Venetian Center for Baroque Music, to understand why and how this city has given rise to a particular repertoire. […] With a lively style and a clear mind, Olivier Lexa guides the reader through the maze of a story as sinuous as the Serenissima, thanks to a very well thought out plan. Chances are the next visit will be a different one.
Philippe Venturini, Les Echos, 24 December 2015
 
After having devoted a first work to the Serenissima (Venise, l'éveil du baroque, 2011), Olivier Lexa, director of the Venetian Center of Baroque Music, takes up its rich material and embellishes it with sumptuous iconography. The result is an elegant art book, made up of short chapters conceived as so many musical movements preceded by an introductory sinfonia. […] The text, in a loose and limpid style, presents itself in the background like the notes of a chromatic score of the most beautiful effect. […] Writing about Venice is always a challenge, here taken up hands down.
François Jean, Diapason, January 2016
 
How to represent music by image? This is the challenge posed by  Olivier Lexa, founder of the Venetian Center for Baroque Music. […] Prefaced by Jordi Savall, mobilizing a sought-after iconography, this object of knowledge and pleasure brings alive a beautiful story, that of the birth of an art of living.
A. N., L’Humanité, 29 December 2015
 
Venice no longer holds any secrets for Olivier Lexa who has already devoted several books to the Serenissima and her music. His latest opus “La Musique à Venise” falls into the so-called “beautiful books” category; the illustrations are numerous and superb […]. Intended for a general public, the text is nonetheless very comprehensive.
M. P., Opéra Magazine, December 2015
 
Music in Venice cannot be reduced to Vivaldi, even if he occupies no less than two chapters in this sumptuously illustrated book. Olivier Lexa, director of the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, shows the specificity of the city of the Doges in the development of music in Europe. […] Olivier Lexa also portrays a world where the boundaries between the arts are dissipating, and where omnipresent music finds a pictorial echo everywhere.
S. Bo., Télérama, 21 November 2015
 
Curiously, although the Serenissima was the cradle of the first theater open to the public at large, there was no beautiful book on this question of music in Venice. Oblivion is repaired in this work written by a historian and musician by training, where the profusion of reproductions supports a clear and erudite text.
Pierre Morio, L’œil, December 2015


MONTEVERDI AND WAGNER
THINKING THE OPERA
 
The exercise could turn into an arbitrary one; on the contrary, as the reader advances, the persistence of the shared themes, the intelligence of the commentaries, updated by the readings of the writers who studied Monteverdi and Wagner compose a coherent landscape which reveals a true history of the sensibilities of the opera, from the Monteverdian baroque to the presymbolic power of the Wagnerian world. How does opera resonate in the work of European philosophers and writers? Olivier Lexa provides a stunning overview in the second book of his work, “How to think the opera“. […] A teeming, brilliant book in which the author draws you with a lively pen through a maze of four centuries.
Jean-Charles Hoffelé, L’Avant-scène opéra, 27 April 2018
 
A demanding course, but irresistibly seductive.
P. F., Classica, November 2018
 
As Olivier Lexa points out in his essay just published by Les Archives Kareline, what is missing is a thought of opera, a current thought of opera. […] And to understand this philosophy proposed by Nietzsche with Wagner, Olivier Lexa, in this essay, proposes in addition by bringing him closer to Monteverdi, to put Tristan and Isolde and Orfeo by Monteverdi face to face. […] By paying attention to the timbres and colors of the orchestra, the burst of tonality, the effect of suspension, we access, as Olivier Lexa says, another present, a hidden reality. By the distortion of the elements, the transformation of dreams into reality, or the awakening of impulses buried in us, life intensifies; thus it works, it operates.
Géraldine Mosna-Savoye, Le Journal de la Philo, France Culture, 20 December 2017
 
The relationship to time, redemption through love, there are many themes that bring the two musicians together, similarities sometimes evoked in the past by analyses like those of Pierre Boulez, but never studied exhaustively, which is done with science and pedagogy by Olivier Lexa in this book , which he does not limit only to musicologists, but on the contrary remains accessible. […] We thus enter these pages inspired by a philosophy of opera less known than the instrumental one and which the author illustrates ideally with this book from the comparative examples of two musical giants.
Philippe-Emmanuel Krautter, Lexnews, January 2018
 
Olivier Lexa discusses the exemplary scope of art history, cultural history and analytical aesthetics, before examining the relationships that several thinkers have had with lyrical art.
Philippe Venturini, Sous la couverture, France Musique, 24 March 2018


LEONARDO DA VINCI
THE INVENTION OF OPERA
 
Masterful work delivered to us by Olivier Lexa. [...] The author gives us a landmark survey. This monument of erudition plunges us into a vast, abundant picture. […] The revelation to which the author invites us is apt to put into perspective the conditions of the birth of opera. [...] After reading Olivier Lexa's latest work, our gaze on the very first lyrical productions, our listening too, will never be the same as they were. [...] If the essay is already aimed at scholars, musicians, lovers of art history and shows, anyone curious about the baroque and humanism will find manna. Ordered with clarity, in an elegant and precise language, this overview is easily read, and its volume should not be off-putting: the richness and density of the work do not prevent its consultation by a reader in a hurry, or simply in the search for a subject to which a particular chapter answers. A reference, but also a great gift for the holidays, and well after ...
Yvan Beuvard, Forumopera, 23 December 2019
 
In the end, these pages correspond to everything that we appreciate in musicological work: accessibility as much in form as in content, coupled with major discoveries making us reconsider our approach to the birth of opera. An undeniable success.
Charlotte Saulneron, Resmusica, 20 January 2020
 
Among the many facets of Leonardo da Vinci's genius, we too often forget his musical and scenic skills. The work published by Le Cerf Editions from the pen of Olivier Lexa, a great connoisseur of Italian music and the history of opera, ideally fills this gap. […] Abundantly documented, this book also addresses the literary knowledge and the philosophical foundations of Leonardo.
Laurent Mettraux, Revue musicale suisse, July 2020