Vivaldi Opera. Catone In Utica

The world of early 18th century opera was very different to that of, say, Mozart. The story was the thing. Librettos were offered to musicians as a means of getting the poetic drama before the public. Thus the great librettists were set multiple times. So it was with Vienna's imperial poet Metastasio's Catone in Utica. This story, set in the ancient Numidian city of Utica - now a ruin in Tunisia - involves the Roman Cato the Younger and his conflict with Julius Caesar. The plot itself is the usual mixture of love and betrayal, but because it was by Metastasio there were at least two settings, by Vinci and Hasse, even before Vivaldi composed the present piece.

Catone in Utica (1737), written for the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, is one of Vivaldi’s last operatic masterpieces. Its splendid score, however, has come down to us incomplete: in fact the first of the three acts is missing. With infinite patience, Jean-Claude Malgoire has reconstructed the missing act, realising the recitative passages complying perfectly to Vivaldi’s stylistic idiom and integrating the missing arias with original arias taken from other operas written by the Red Priest. Thus Catone in Utica is at last available, in a world-première recording, in its complete form.

A disc which will delight both Vivaldi enthusiasts and lovers of Baroque music generally. Excellent recorded sound and strongly recommended on all counts.

A new recording from Roberta Invernizzi always gives pleasure, but on the rare occasion when the Italian soprano is placed in the spotlight, as with this new collection of opera arias, it promises something very special indeed. Invernizzi is known for her style and drama in the music of the Baroque (as on recent discs of Handel and Campra). This new journey, on Glossa, showcases Vivaldi’s own fertile dramatic capacity to capture moods and a whole range of emotional highs and lows embracing anger, despair, anxiety, amorous frustration and touching intensity. Invernizzi triumphs, crowned by her electrifying performance of 'Dopo un’orrida procella' from 'Griselda'.

This 3CD box unites three recitals that showcase the virtuosity, elegance and expressivity of mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. Together, the programmes, recorded between 2003 and 2009, offer a survey of the repertoire that has figured most strongly in Genaux’s career – music from the 18th and early 19th centuries by Vivaldi, Handel, Hasse, Rossini and Donizetti. The spectacular recital of arias by Vivaldi, ‘Pyrotechnics’ was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2010.

Twenty years after her Vivaldi Album helped reignite interest in the composer’s fine operas, Bartoli returns to the operatic music. Joined by Ensemble Matheus and Jean-Christophe Spinosi, she spins off the vocal fireworks with technique that’s as impressive as ever—but her voice has developed with age like a fine wine, revealing new layers of warmth. As a survey of Vivaldi’s stage works, this collection is invaluable, but Bartoli sprinkles it with star quality and a palpable love of this ever-inventive music.

Cecilia Bartoli presents a brand-new album of arias by Antonio Vivaldi, two decades after her ground-breaking 'Vivaldi Album'. The original Vivaldi Album was a seminal event, launching a substantial revival of Vivaldi s long dismissed operas and setting a standard for classical concept albums that stands to this day. In the 20 years since, Cecilia Bartoli has recorded less than 5 minutes of additional Vivaldi music, making her return to this composer with a new album a true event. Bartoli is joined on this recording by French baroque experts Ensemble Matheus under the baton of Jean-Christophe Spinosi.

Jean-Claude Malgoire has been one of the more important French conductors of the latter twentieth and early twenty first centuries. He has focused heavily on Baroque music, though his repertory also includes operas by Mozart and Salieri. As music director of the La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy and l'Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing, he has given many highly acclaimed concerts and opera productions, and made numerous recordings with major labels.

The brief biographical note duplicated in each of the three booklets (these CDs were previously available separately and were recorded over several years) tell a rather sad tale of yet another famous and successful composer destined to die young, in debt, and unmourned by a hard-hearted public. That he was a close friend of none other than Mozart for twenty years of his short life draws the parallel still closer. It is too easy to see the post J.S.Bach period as one consisting of a gap followed by Haydn and Mozart. In fact the sons of Bach included several very fine musicians indeed; Johann Christian is one, with the other most significant being Carl Philipp Emanuel. These two have only to be heard to alert the listener to their importance. Sons of Bach they may have been, but clones they were not.

Soprano Simone Kermes sings a variety of repertoire from the Baroque to the Romantic, but it's in the Baroque where she has made the strongest impact, and she shines in this album of Vivaldi opera arias and solo cantatas. The recordings are culled from two earlier Deutsche Grammophon Archiv releases, Amor Profano and Amor Sacro, so fans of the singer who already own those albums would not be getting new material with this one. For other listeners, though, it's an attractive selection that showcases Kermes' versatility, as well as Vivaldi's.