Intrigue, deception, gesture, sorcery, malice, much rivalry and some misunderstanding all follow. It's a revenge drama: the somewhat self-destructive, certainly determined, Armida (Sara Mingardo) has been abandoned by Rinaldo. Alessandrini has reconstructed it here using carefully chosen existing music of the composer with the assistance of the musicologist Frédéric Delaméa.įirst performed at Carnival in 1718, Armida al campo d'Egitto has Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata as its source. Marking the end of Vivaldi's first period in Venice, it lacks music for Act II. Every one of the seven soloists is excellent their delivery commends the work as worthy of close attention, despite the fact that Armida al campo d'Egitto can't claim to occupy a space at the very top of Vivaldi's œuvre.Īrmida is the tenth opera in the Vivaldi Edition it's the second one to be recorded by Rinaldo Alessandrini (their first was L’Olimpiade). The eminent and highly energetic Rinaldo Alessandrini leads this production with his Concerto Italiano, from whom the playing is light, full of life, appropriately delicate and yet punchy - as suits the libretto.

This latest offering, the Dramma per musica (in three acts), Armida al campo d'Egitto RV699 (volume 44 in the Edition), is well up to the project's usual standards. The plan - which is on course - is to have released by the time of its completion in 2015 all 450 autograph works of the composer that are now collected in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria in Turin, where they have been at various stages of editing and publishing since the 1930s. With high quality recording released after high quality recording on the ever-enterprising naïve label, it can truly claim to be one of the most promising and significant recording projects of the twenty-first century. The Vivaldi Edition is a highly ambitious recording project conceived by the musicologist, Alberto Basso.

Vivaldi armida