94784

Rossini’s original version of Maometto II was premiered at the San Carlo Opera in Naples on 3 December 1820. It was his 31st opera and the eighth, and arguably the most radical, of the reform operas that Rossini wrote for performance there. At Naples he had the benefit of an outstanding full-time orchestra and chorus as well as an unequalled roster of star singers. This enabled him to distance himself from the populist clamour of Rome and Venice for crescendos and simplistic orchestral forms as well as static arias and stage scenes. Maometto Secondo has the potential to become one of the great operas in the repertoire. Richard Osborne, the Rossini scholar, describes it as the grandest of Rossini's opera seria, "epic in scale and revolutionary in the seamlessness of its musical structuring".

What if Vivaldi’s famous Quattro Stagioni, performed in Paris in 1728, had been preceded by those of Guido, the star violinist of the Parisian orchestras of Louis XIV’s maturity ? Here, at last, are these two works reunited: to the well-known virtuosity of Vivaldi’s work, of extraordinary impact, Guido’s Seasons oppose a mixture of Italian features and a thousand facets worthy of the French Court, with an infectious ardour! A mysterious Neapolitan who arrived in Paris around 1702 as Music Master to Philippe d’Orléans, Guido was close to the financier Crozat, who in 1716 commissioned Watteau to produce four paintings on the theme of the Seasons: he set them to music around 1717 with his Scherzi armonici sopra le Quattro Stagioni dell’anno.