Opera Arias

A recital of opera arias by Vivaldi?
And what’s more, sung by a male soprano?
Until a few years ago, such a thing would have been inconceivable in a record market that only produced vocal anthologies of Mozart, Verdi and Puccini.
And yet, the strong return to baroque music today concerns the operatic repertoire as well, revealing Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) to have been one of the major protagonists of Italian eighteenth-century opera.
Thus half of the pieces presented here are reasonably familiar to a particularly attentive concert-going public since they often appear on the recitals of operatic sopranos and contraltos of international renown.
This recording offers a sampling of ten arias drawn from ten different operas, chosen by Angelo Manzotti with the intention of illustrating both the different vocal styles adopted by Vivaldi in his “musical dramas”, and some of the characteristics concerning contemporary practices of composition and performance.