Laura Baldassari, an opera singer, actress, artist, and partner in the multidisciplinary studio Atelier Biagetti, shares a playlist of some of her favorite opera songs and the performers who are providing her solace at the moment. “I’ve been thinking of an emotional journey through opera arias of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in which the voice is tinged with different shades, with light and darkness, with infinite tints and contrasts, with wonder and amazement in favor of a profound dive into ourselves,” she tells us from her home in Milan, where she’s been in quarantine for the past several weeks. “It is a music that touches the deepest edges of the human soul, dazes and stuns—it’s a music that still speaks to us, here and now.”

Reflecting on our current moment, she adds, “I think that this is certainly a very important opportunity to imagine our future, to understand what we really need, to see what we are and where we’re going. We need to reinvent ourselves, to rethink our behavior, starting from how we’re treating this planet and our precious environment and resources, to the idea that we don’t have everything under our control—I think this is relevant and true. I think that we have to find the courage to become stronger. It’s a big chance for all of us to change together.”

"Tu del ciel ministro eletto,” Il Trionfo del Tempo a del Disinganno by George Frideric Handel (performed by Natalie Dessay)

“Dormi o fulmine,” La Giuditta by Alessandro Scarlatti (performed by Filippo Mineccia)

“Alto Giove,” Polifemo by Nicola Porpora (performed by Franco Fagioli)

“Lamento della Ninfa,” Madrigals, Book 8 by Claudio Monteverdi (performed by Núria Rial, Jan Van Elsacker, Cyril Auvity, and Nicolas Achten)

“What Power Art Thou?” King Arthur, or The British Worthy by Henry Purcell (performed by Andreas Scholl)

“Vedrò con mio diletto,” Il Giustino by Antonio Vivaldi (performed by Jakub Józef Orliński)

“Agitata da due venti,” Griselda by Antonio Vivaldi (performed by Cecilia Bartoli)

“Cara sposa,” Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel (performed by David Daniels)

”Pur ti miro,” L’incoronazione di Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi (performed by Philippe Jaroussky and Núria Rial)

“Thy Hand, Belinda...When I am Laid in Earth,” Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell (performed by Jessye Norman)