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Vivaldi: La Verita in Cimento.(Sound Recording Review)
[] Bertagnolli, Laurens, Mingardo, Stutzmann; Jaroussky, Rolfe Johnson; Ensemble Matheus, Spinosi. Notes, texts and translations. Opus 111 OP 30365 (Naxos, dist.)
Stravinsky's famous remark that Vivaldi didn't write 300 concertos--he wrote one concerto 300 times--might apply as well to Vivaldi's twenty or so surviving operas. There's a sameness that pervades his melodies and chug-along rhythms, along with a dearth of harmonic imagination that might make a first-year harmony student blush.
La Verita in Cimento (Truth On Trial) had its premiere in Venice, in 1720. It's a typical opera seria, unfolding in lengthy recitatives, with da capo arias each expressing an emotional state arrived at via the preceding situation. Top it off with a plot that fictionalizes history, and you've got the formula. But if he lacks Handel's exquisite sense of vocal line, Vivaldi compensates with a kinetic energy and sense for instrumental color that enhance a succession of arias in Act III featuring trumpet, viola da gamba and flute (recorder) obbligatos.
In its first recording, this spunky relic of a style gone by gets optimum treatment in Opus 111's ongoing series devoted to the collection of 450 Vivaldi manuscripts in Turin's National University Library. The plot centers on Mamud, Sultan of Cambaja, and his two sons--one by the Sultana Rustena, the other by his concubine, Damira. The boys were reversed in infancy, and each has been brought up by the ...
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