ORLANDIANA -- Vivaldiana

Speranza

Approved by the censor on November 9 1727, the "Orlando furioso" of Antonio Vivaldi was premiered on the 15th of the same month at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venezia.

The career of Vivaldi's new opera was to be brief.

From December 10 onwards it was replaced by a revival of FARNACE, which had enjoyed a successful run at the same theatre in February that year.

The programming of a second opera during the autumn season, when normally there was a only a single production, indicated that the first had been a failure.

A few days after the first performance of ORLANDO, in a letter written from Veince, CONTI tells his frined, Contessa di CAYLUS:

"Our operas hav ecommenced but there is nothing worth recounting."

The verdict of this great opera-lover, who had been passionately enthusiastic oat the start of the year about FARNACE and its music, 'exceedingly varied in registers both sublime and tender', implicitly announced this setback for Vivaldi.

Admittedly, in writing this lines, CONTI may perhaps have been thinking of Bonniventi's BERTARIDO, RE DE' LONGOBARDI, which had been running at the Teatro Cassiano since October 25, or IL REGNO GALANTE by Reali, performed on the same small state of the TEATRO SAN MOISE since November 8, rather than Vivaldi's Orlando.

It may even be that he had not yet attended a performance of the new opera at the Sant'Angelo.

These hypotheses are conceivable but are undermined by the absence of any reference to ORLANDO in subsequent letters by CONTI, whereas he praises PORPORA's "Arianna e Teseo", presented at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo from November 22 onwards.

So it would seem more probable that, like the Venetian public, Conti was disconcerted by the most atypical operatic work ever to flow from Vivaldi's pen.

Orlando (as the title of the wordbook has it) or ORLANDO FURIOSO (as it is called in the autograph manuscript) had to wait two and a half centuries to achieve recognition as the dramatic masterpiece of the composer of LE QUATTRO STAGIONI.