Amor Profano: Vivaldi Opera Arias

MARBECKS STAFF PICK - BEST RECORDINGS 2008

"An object lesson in putting together a Baroque opera arias recital disc. 'Exhilarating' and 'dazzling' are only two of the words critic David Vickers uses to describe this smashing release. In a brilliantly put-together programme, Simone Kermes blazes a trail through more than a dozen Vivaldi arias. There are vocal fireworks aplenty, alongside a rapt concentration in the slower pieces. Essential listening."
Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine May 2008)

Vivaldi never ceases to surprise us. Dazzled by his Four Seasons, the 20th century rediscovered him as an incredible composer of instrumental music, while the 21st century has found that he was also an extraordinary composer of vocal music. And our sense of surprise shows no sign of abating as barely a year passes without some lost or forgotten score resurfacing - Andromeda liberata was exhumed in Venice in 2002, Motezuma was rediscovered in Berlin in 2003 and a Dixit Dominus was identified in Dresden in 2005. All have proved to be enthralling discoveries culminating in world-premiere recordings for Deutsche Grammophon.

The present recital features five arias never previously recorded (2.-5. and 15.) and takes its place within this voyage of discovery. It brings together some of the most beautiful arie d'amore from the pen of the Red Priest and invites listeners to explore the composer's works for the theatre, an aspect of his output that is as fascinating as it is prolific but which still remains largely unknown.

Chronologically speaking, our journey begins in Venice in 1714 with the aria "Ah, fuggi rapido" from the opera Orlando furioso. This work received its triumphant first performance at the Teatro S. Angelo in 1713 and was revived a year later on the same stage. It was in fact a joint venture by Vivaldi and his younger colleague Giovanni Alberto Ristori, collective works being common currency at this time. As such, it provides fascinating testimony to the composer's tentative first steps in the world of Venetian opera.
Vivaldi's name quickly became better known beyond the confines of Venice, especially at Mantua, where he composed Tito Manlio for the 1719 carnival. Written to celebrate the forthcoming wedding of the governor of Mantua, the opera is lavishly scored, with the brass particularly prominent in the two arias "Dopo sì rei disastri" and "Combatta un gentil cor". In the former the trumpet is used as a simple harmony instrument that adds a discreet element of colour, whereas in the second it adopts a more virtuoso role, vying with the vocal line in terms of its bravura writing.

In the autumn of 1720 Vivaldi wrote La verità in cimento for his native Venice. Composed in a resolutely modern style, it was vigorously criticized by composers of a more conservative stamp. "Amato ben" is a beguiling aria sung by Princess Rosane at the end of the first act and is a wonderful example of Vivaldi's innovative musical language, with its rich melodic vein.

Earlier in 1720, Vivaldi's name had been introduced to opera-lovers in Rome with a revised version of Tito Manlio staged at the Teatro della Pace during the annual carnival season, a collective work to which he contributed the third act. Only a handful of fragments of this opera have survived, one of which is the splendid aria "Non m'affligge il tormento di morte", a ravishing Allegro that subtly combines a heroic declaration with a love song. It was also for Rome that Vivaldi wrote Giustino for the 1724 carnival. With its virtuoso horn writing, the aria "Or che cinto ho il crin d'alloro" is one of its most arresting numbers. That same season Vivaldi also contributed to another collective commission, Tigrane, from which the aria "Squarciami pur il seno" is taken. An untypical piece, it is as much an accompanied recitative as it is an aria, and yet it succeeds magnificently in evoking the lovesick passion that ravages Cleopatra's heart.

Following his success in Rome, Vivaldi returned to his native Venice in the autumn of 1725, writing La fede tradita e vendicata for the 1726 carnival. Only one number has survived, "Sin nel placido soggiorno", marked "Andante molto", but it is one of Vivaldi's most beautiful arias. Sung by Ernelinda, the daughter of the king of Norway, the aria describes the heroine's mental anguish as she sings of her love of Vitige, prince of Denmark, and of her fury at the thought of her murdered brother. The number is particularly notable for its sophisticated orchestration, with two desks of violins and two desks of violas playing con sordino and accompanied by two recorders and bass. There is also a prominent part for a solo cello.

Vivaldi again left Venice in 1732 and returned to Mantua to write Semiramide for that year's carnival. Only a handful of arias from this exceptionally mature work have come down to us, but they include the graceful "Quegl'occhi luminosi", in which Oronte, the prince of Arabia, passionately declares his love for Aspasia. The impressive vocal writing attests to the virtuosity of the castrato Marianino Nicolini, for whom the aria was written, while the orchestra elaborates a theme borrowed from Vivaldi's Bassoon Concerto RV 466. It was also for Nicolini that Vivaldi wrote the fearsome bravura aria "Siam navi all'onde algenti" two years later, the musical and dramatic high point of L'olimpiade, a setting of a text by the poet Pietro Metastasio.

Throughout the period that Vivaldi was producing these operas at a rate of two or three a year, he continued to demonstrate his instrumental genius in the brilliant opening sinfonias that he wrote for them. The sinfonia to Bajazet, a tragedia per musica first staged at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona during the 1735 carnival, is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and evocative that he ever wrote: in the outer movements the gleaming sonorities of the horns, with their strident attack, recall the high-handed victory of the Mongol emperor Tamerlano, while the sombre ruminations of the cellos in the sublime central Andante depict the noble despair of the overthrown sultan, Bajazet.

The operas of Vivaldi's years of maturity accord an even greater role to vocal virtuosity, and there are few finer examples of this than Griselda, which was first performed in Venice in May 1735. The opera finds the composer at the very height of his creative powers and contains some of the most unbridled arias he ever wrote, including Princess Costanza's "Agitata da due venti", a tempestuous number tailored to suit the vocal abilities of the soprano Margherita Giacomazzi.

It was probably during these final years of his career that Vivaldi wrote the aria "La farfalletta audace s'invola", which has survived in an isolated manuscript that is impossible to ascribe to any known opera. This delightful depiction of the "bold little butterfly" of the aria's opening line - a metaphor for the lover - is imbued with the galant spirit that was fashionable in the late 1730s and illustrates the influence of a new generation of Neapolitan composers on the now elderly Venetian composer, so much so, indeed, that one may question the piece's authenticity.

Our chronological survey ends with the twilight years of Vivaldi's operatic career and with Catone in Utica, a work first staged at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona during the spring of 1737, a mere four years before the composer's death. The aria "Se in campo armato" finds Vivaldi at the very pinnacle of his art, its magisterial display of bellicose bravado turning into a lover's tender complaint and thus providing a perfect illustration of the composer's treatment of "amor profano", an example of the vocal writing of an acute observer of human passions that reminds us that the most violent impulses of the soul can never be separated from the most tender transports of the heart.