Vivaldi: Vespri per l'Assunzione di Maria Vergine.(Opera Review)

VIVALDI: Vespri per l'Assunzione di Maria Vergine

Bertagnolli, Invernizzi, Simboli, Mingardo; Ferrarini, Bellotto; De Secondi, violin, Concerto Italiano, Alessandrini. Texts and translations. Opus 111 OP30383 (2)

VIVALDI: Sacred Music-10

Sampson, Lunn, DiDonato, Semmingsen, Summers; Blaze; Choir of the King's Consort, The King's Consort, King. Texts and translations. Hyperion CDA66849

Just as Cecilia Bartoli did for her best-selling Decca album, Hyperion and Opus 111 have been mining the Vivaldi collection of the National University Library in Turin to bring to life previously unpublished treasures from this composer--Hyperion for its recently completed series of sacred choral music with Robert King and Opus 111 for its unique and ambitious mission to record a complete edition of every Vivaldi score housed at Turin.

The current Opus 111 installment offers a reconstruction of a service of Solemn Vespers for the Assumption of the Virgin. Since only individual pieces of Vivaldi's various complete vespers cycles have survived, the resulting "work" recorded here is by necessity a hypothetical compilation. No problem with that--we can leave the musicology to the musicologists (in this case, Frederic Delamea and conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini); the rest of us can enjoy the magnificent results. Soprano Roberta Invernizzi tosses off runs like she's shivering with delight; even in her recitatives, it sounds like she can barely contain her passion. Soprano Gemma Bertagnolli, showing great versatility, is gloriously serene in the slow movements of the Laudate Pueri RV 600 and dazzling in the fast passagework. She and Invernizzi, despite their distinctive colorings, blend marvelously in their duo coloratura sections. The two men, tenor Gianluca Ferrarini and baritone Matteo Bellotto, are also very good in their duet movement, if not quite up to the impossibly high standard set by Invernizzi and Bertagnolli. Mezzo Sara Mingardo is polished and tasteful as always, if not quite passionate to the same degree as the sopranos. However, she sings the slow, haunting "Cum dederit" movement of Nisi Dominus RV 608 as if she were caressing an indescribably delicate sacred object, and she and viola d'amorist Ettore Belli show exquisite mutual sensitivity in the "Gloria Patti." (This Nisi Dominus, by the way, contains some of the most profound and searching music to come out of the Turin archive to date.) Soprano Anna Simboli is lovely and direct in the brief, connecting antiphon movements.

It all sounds gorgeous. The overture, a movement from the Concerto in F major for two violins, two ...