Book Description

This study of Vivaldi's late operas grew out of an interest not so much in Vivaldi but in Baroque opera in general. On examining the position of research into this genre a few years ago, it appeared that most of the important composers in this field had been investigated to some degree, with the exception of Vivaldi. As Mario Rinaldi has shown in his survey of Vivaldi research, the vocal works were neglected until the last few years, and despite the impetus provided by the tercentenary of his birth in 1978, the balance has not yet been restored. Considering the popularity of his instrumental works, it seemed rather unfair that his theatrical music should be virtually ignored (an interesting comparison can be made here with Haydn), and so the present work aims to throw some light onto this side of his activities. For practical reasons it was impossible to take into account all the surviving operatic fragments scattered throughout the libraries of Europe. However, as all the most important manuscripts are housed in Turin, these formed the basis of this study, with the addition of six arias from Ercole su'l Termodonte in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire National de Musique, Paris. Further restrictions, however, were still necessary, and so, as many of the later works use librettos by leading figures such as Zeno and Metastasio, these mature operas, dating from 1727 onwards, seemed the most obvious on which to concentrate. One opera, Griselda, has been singled out for particular attention on account of the available information concerning the adaptation of Zeno's libretto, and Vivaldi's score of this work has recently been reproduced in the Garland Series of facsimiles of Italian opera. Most of the work that has been done on the operas so far has tended to approach them from the point of view of the concertos, constantly drawing parallels between the two styles. There are, obviously, many connections, but, for the most part, this investigation has tried to view them as dramatic works in their own right--the way in which Vivaldi, as a man of the theatre, would surely have regarded them. --from Preface.