Astolfo

Diving into Vivaldi's Orlando furioso with Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Matheus Ensemble, and a shockingly good cast is enough to make even the most jaded listener smile. It is fresh, unrelentingly impressive, and entertaining to a fault. The opera is over-plotted: the first paragraph of the synopsis is enough to confuse anyone not taking notes. And listening to the entire thing would amount to more flowery, athletic vocalism than most can stand in one sitting. But those with the remotest interest in Vivaldi opera, or opera at all, will be hard pressed not to marvel at the quality of what's recorded here. Spinosi is a brilliant Vivaldian who pulls sweet-toned lyricism and down-and-dirty sawing from his Matheus Ensemble, making the most of the composer's rich orchestration. And the cast pulls one rabbit after another out of its collective hat, tackling Vivaldi's consummately difficult arias with élan.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741), nicknamed il Prete Rosso ("The Red Priest") because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, Catholic priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe. Vivaldi is known mainly for composing instrumental concertos, especially for the violin, as well as sacred choral works and over forty operas. His best known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons..

Vivaldi's operas are rarely recorded and even less often performed, but happily they are gradually gaining more exposure. The most familiar and most frequently recorded is his 1727 Orlando Furioso. The fact that it has been on the public's radar is due largely to an excellent 1977 recording starring Marilyn Horne and Victoria de los Angeles, which has been reissued on Erato. The opera has since been recorded twice, and a DVD of a 1989 San Francisco Opera production featuring Horne and Kathleen Kuhlmann has been released. The newer CDs are extraordinarily fine; in choosing between Naïve's 2005 version led by Jean-Christophe Spinosi and this CPO release conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli, the listener is in a win-win position. Both feature stellar soloists, who are also compelling actors, and beautiful orchestral playing.

Naïve are delighted to announce the world premiere recording of 'Orlando Furioso', the 1714 version. It scored a huge success at the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, where it was directed by none other than Vivaldi and his father. The manuscript, rediscovered 250 years later in Vivaldi’s personal library, now in Turin, was thought to be a revision of an existing 'Orlando' of 1713 by Bolognese composer Ristori. However, the musicologists in charge of the numbering of the works of Vivaldi, Peter Ryom and his successor Federico Maria Sardelli, wondered why Vivaldi should have kept this music in his personal corpus among all his other scores, and noticed that the manuscript featured many different hands and numerous pasted-in corrections of the parts.