Federico Maria Sardelli

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 continues its admirable series of complete recordings of Vivaldi's operas with Atenaide, an opera seria that was not successful at its 1728 premiere, and received no further performances during the composer's lifetime. This recording was made as a result of the first modern production, which was presented in the same Florentine theater in which the opera had received its premiere. With an unusually convoluted plot, and lasting over three-and-a-half hours, its unlikely that Atenaide will ever make its way into the repertoire, but especially for the Vivaldi enthusiast and the lover of virtuosic Baroque vocal display, the opera should be very attractive.

Francesco Cavalli was the most successful Venetian opera composer of the mid-seventeenth century. This new production is orchestrated and conducted by the internationally reputed baroque specialist Federico Maria Sardelli. It is directed by the young Frenchwoman Mariame Cl+ªment, who is currently making a name for herself with her infectious directing in German and French opera houses. The title role is sung by the promising counter-tenor Christophe Dumaux.

Alessandro Scarlatti is generally considered one of the most important Italian composers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. But his music, although it has received more attention in recent years, is still largely unknown. This is partly due to the large quantity of his output: in the genre of the chamber cantata alone at least six hundred compositions are with certainty attributable to him.

Antonio Vivaldi composed Arsilda, Regina di Ponto for the Venetian theater of Sant'Angelo in the fall of 1716. While Vivaldi had, by its debut, been an important member of Venetian musical culture for over a decade as a violinist and composer, he had begun composing only three years earlier. Domenico Lalli, his librettist, who settled in Venice in 1710 after fleeing his native Naples upon being charged with embezzlement, was one of the most important librettists of the first decades of the eighteenth century.

In his definitive study of the composer's life and work, Michael Talbot spoke of the prospect of 'perpetual discovery' in respect of Vivaldi, resulting from a neglect spanning centuries. 'Scarcely a year passes,' he wrote in 1978, 'without the announcement of some fresh discovery'. This CD gives an excellent example of what we might expect even now, 30 years after Talbot's study, with a collection of new finds from just the last year and a half!

Francesco Cavalli succeeded Monteverdi as the most influential composer of the new genre of opera that emerged in mid-17th-century Venice. Il Xerse is a fictitious dramma per musica that tells of Persian King Xerxes’ love for Romilda, who in turn is in love with his brother Arsamene. The plot is an entertaining and extremely intricate human comedy of crossed loves, court intrigues and disguises – the work’s popularity saw it staged in Paris at the wedding of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain. Since overshadowed by Handel’s later Xerxes, this Martina Franca production is the first in modern times.

Handel Arias is the solo debut of one of the most exciting bass-baritones of today. Expertly advised by Baroque expert, Francesco Lora, Ildebrando fashions his debut album into a panoramic sweep of Italian Handel arias for bass-baritone. Mixing well-known and rare, lyric with highly virtuosic, Ildebrando’s phenomenal Handel shows the versatility and wide range of Handel’s compositions for bass-baritone and the vocal capacity of the singer to master this programme. Undeniably appealing to all voice and Baroque music lovers, this album will excite music lovers well beyond.

The general wall of obscurity surrounding Vivaldi's operas seems to be lifting. Tito Manlio, a large work composed in 1719 for a royal wedding that was called off at the last minute, was recorded on LPs in the 1970s and in 2006 received two new recordings, released at nearly the same time. So much for the theory that opera on recordings is dying! The opera is a compelling one, with a convincing father-son drama: the ancient Roman consul Tito Manlio (or Titus Manlius) plans to have his son executed for disobedience, but the younger Manlio is saved by a flood of acclamation for his military deeds. The opera seria libretto was set by several other composers of the early eighteenth century. Its central role is the young Manlio, intended for a castrato and sung here by soprano Elisabeth Scholl.