Antonio Vivaldi - Orlando 1714

In a development described by music experts as "a bombshell in the world of Baroque opera", a new version of Vivaldi's opera Orlando Furioso has been discovered, 270 years after his death.
The manuscript has been dated to 1714, 13 years before Vivaldi composed his later masterpiece. It contains as many as 20 new arias, never heard before – all composed around the time that Vivaldi was also working on The Four Seasons, said to be the most-recorded piece of classical music in history.
"It's a gift from heaven," said Susan Orlando, a Vivaldi expert. Federico Maria Sardelli, the Vivaldi scholar who initially identified the master's hand, said: "The music is completely new for everybody. It's very exciting." Although the manuscript was among vast numbers of Vivaldi papers in an Italian library, it had been overlooked because it did not bear a composer's name.
In 1714, an Orlando opera was a huge hit at the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, running for 40 performances – a long run at the time. The theatre's directors were Vivaldi and his musician father, but the fact that this opera was by Vivaldi himself went unnoticed by posterity.
Musicologists now believe that because Vivaldi was still a priest he may not have wanted to attract attention to an activity possibly seen as frivolous. Another theory is that he did not want to be seen to dominate the theatre, having just had another opera staged there.
The manuscript was found in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin in Vivaldi's personal library. It had somehow been catalogued as a revision of an existing Orlando Furioso by a young Bolognese composer, Giovanni Alberto Ristori.
Sardelli began studying it because it could not be explained why Vivaldi should have kept this music in his personal corpus among all his other scores. No other composer's works were in the library.
Meticulous examination of the manuscript by Sardelli, confirmed by other leading scholars, has shown that it is by the master himself. Sardelli described it as less complex than Vivaldi's later music. But it was also beautiful, exuding the inspiration and clarity of The Four Seasons, he said. "Vivaldi was composing The Four Seasons around the same time. There are no close thematic links [with the new Orlando], but the musical language is very close. It's an extraordinary opera … He was full of ideas."
The libretto is the only overlap between the two Orlando Furiosos. Based on the epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto, Grazio Braccioli's dramatic libretto inspired Vivaldi with its tales of lovers, dark magic and madness. The music, though, is completely different. The role of Orlando, for example, is sung by a baritone in the 1714 work and a mezzo-soprano in the 1727 version.

tracklist:

CD 1

Sinfonia: Concerto RV 781
1 Allegro 2’22
2 Grave 1’51
3 Allegro 1’46
Atto primo
4 scena 1 [Alcina, Angelica] Recitativo 2’29
5 scena 1 [Angelica] Aria: Vorria la mia speranza 2’52
6 scena 2 [Alcina, orlando, Astolfo] Recitativo 2’08
7 scena 2 [Alcina] Aria: Se fedele serbi affetto 2’32
8 Scena 3 [orlando, Astolfo] Recitativo 1’19
9 Scena 3 [Astolfo] Aria: La fè, l’amor che ho in sen 1’34
10 Scena 4 [orlando, bradamante] Recitativo 1’44
11 Scena 4 [bradamante] Aria: Rivo che tumido 2’58
12 Scena 5 [orlando] Recitativo 0’20
13 Scena 5 [orlando] Aria: Nel profondo cieco mondo 2’36
14 Scena 6 [Medoro, Angelica] Recitativo 2’56
– Scena 7 [Alcina, Angelica, Medoro] Recitativo
15 Scena 7 [Medoro] Aria: Se trova il lume la farfalletta 2’27
16 Scena 8 [orlando, Alcina, Angelica, Medoro] Recitativo 2’52
17 Scena 8 [Angelica] Aria: Tu sei degli occhi miei 2’36
18 Scena 9 [Alcina, Medoro] Recitativo 0’32
19 Scena 9 [Medoro] Aria: E’ la brama in chi ben ama 2’46
20 Scena 10 [Ruggiero, Alcina] Recitativo 2’34
– Scena 11 [bradamante, Alcina, Ruggiero] Recitativo
21 Scena 11 [Ruggiero] Aria: Porta il sol del tuo sembiante 2’23
22 Scena 11 [bradamante, Alcina, Ruggiero] Recitativo 1’16
23 Scena 11 [Ruggiero] Aria: Non muore il fiore 2’27
24 Scena 12 [bradamante, Alcina] Recitativo 0’32
25 Scena 12 [Alcina] Aria: Per lo stral che vien da’ rai 1’33
26 Scena 13 [bradamante] Recitativo 0’31
27 Scena 13 [bradamante] Aria: Amerò costante sempre 4’36

CD 2

Atto secondo
1 Scena 1 [Alcina, Astolfo] Recitativo 1’39
– Scena 2 [Astolfo, Alcina, bradamante] Recitativo
2 Scena 2 [Alcina] Aria: Chi seguir vuol la costanza 3’16
3 Scena 3 [bradamante, Ruggiero, Astolfo] Recitativo 2’23
4 Scena 3 [Astolfo] Aria: Ah, fuggi rapido 2’21
5 Scena 4 [bradamante, Ruggiero, orlando] Recitativo 1’27
6 Scena 4 [bradamante] Aria: Taci, non ti lagnar 1’17
7 Scena 5 [Ruggiero, orlando] Recitativo 0’57
8 Scena 5 [Ruggiero] Aria: Piangerò, sin che l’onda del pianto 3’52
9 Scena 6 [Medoro, Angelica] Recitativo 0’56
10 Scena 6 [Medoro] Aria: Io sembro appunto quell’augelletto 3’26
11 Scena 7 [Angelica, orlando] Recitativo 1’17
12 Scena 7 [Angelica] Aria: Spietato, oh Dio 2’04
13 Scene 7-10 [orlando, Angelica] Recitativo 2’03
14 Scena 11 [orlando] Recitativo 3’01
15 Scena 12 [Ruggiero] Aria: Cara sposa, in questo petto 2’23
16 Scena 12 [bradamante] Aria: Grazie ed amori 2’27
17 Scena 12 [Alcina] Recitativo 1’17
18 Scena 12 [Alcina] Recitativo 1’09
19 Scena 12 [Alcina] Aria: Usignolo, lascia il duolo 0’41
20 Scena 12 [Alcina] Recitativo 0’32
21 Scena 13 [coro] Al fragor de’ corni audaci 1’02
22 Scena 13 [Medoro, Angelica, Alcina] Recitativo 1’31
23 Scena 13 [Medoro] Recitativo accompagnato 0’29
24 Scena 13 [coro] Gran Madre Venere 0’28
25 Scena 13 [Medoro, Angelica, Alcina] Recitativo 0’12
26 Scena 13 [Angelica] Recitativo accompagnato 0’42
27 Scena 13 [coro] Diva dell’Espero 0’28
28 Scena 13 [Alcina] Recitativo 0’58
29 Scena 13 [Alcina] Aria: Amaranto ch’eterno ha il suo vanto 2’17
30 Scena 14 [Medoro, Angelica] Recitativo 0’36
31 Scena 14 [Medoro, Angelica] duetto: Belle pianticelle 0’32
32 Scena 14 [Angelica, Medoro] Recitativo 0’22
33 Scena 14 [Medoro, Angelica] duetto: Sei mio Nume, se il mio bene 0’47
34 Scena 15 [orlando] Recitativo 2’54
35 Scena 15 [orlando] Arioso: Io ti getto elmo ed usbergo 0’30
36 Scena 15 [orlando] Recitativo 0’32
37 Scena 15 [orlando] Aria: Ho cento vanni al tergo 1’34


The Vivaldi Edition, a recording venture conceived by the Italian musicologist Alberto Basso and the independent label Naïve, is one of the most ambitious recording projects of the twenty-first century.
Its principal objective is to record the massive collection of Vivaldi autograph manuscripts preserved today in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, some 450 works. Incredibly, this is the private library of scores Vivaldi had at home at the time of his death in Vienna in 1741 and includes his extant operas, hundreds of concertos, sacred compositions and cantatas. Much of this music has not been heard since the 18th century.

Details are in my Naive Complete Edition here: AVAX

Follows a list of the works I posted until now: