ORLANDIANA -- Vivaldiana

Speranza

Vivaldi's yearning for a new ORLANDO FURIOSO stems from the presence of an inspirational muse in the person of LUCIA LANCETTI, who created the role of ORLANDO in the autumn of 1727.

Vivaldi's encounter with Lancetti seems to have been the factor that sparked off his return to earlier sources.

In Lancetti's dramatic temperament and exceptional vocal compass, Vivaldi had probably found his ideal successor to Anton Francesco CARLI, his Orlando of 1713-1714, capable of embodying and sublimating the crazed paladin to whom he had devoted so much effort.

At a time when the theatres of VENEZIA were exhausting their budgets in sumptuous fees paid out to ever more demanding star singers, the composer-impresario dreamed of standing up to the Neapolitans by setting against them, in a renovated form of Venetian opera, a phenomenon capable of vying with the most famous singers.

Alas, Vivaldi's attempt probably met with failure.

Even though several arias from ORLANDO FURIOSO were immediately recycled in the revision of FARNACE, which closed the autumn 1727 season, and a number of them regularly appeared in later scores by Vivaldi.

The work as a whole, and its most atypical sections, which were also its most masterly, found no echo elsewhere.

Self-regeneration was no longer a possibility of Venetian opera.

Novelty drawn from its native roots was not piquant enough for a land where the music of the previous year no longer enjoys success, as Carlo di Brusses was to write twelve years later.

A land whose operatic public was by now betwitched by the swirling coloratura of Neapolitan vocalism, as RUGGERO is by Alcina's magic philtre.

In proposing a dramatic revolution led by a female singer "en travesty" at a time when, as CONTI put it, the constellation of musical fanaticism so dominates that the most sober of senators pay court to these singers, as Roman knights once did to mimes, the impresario of the Sant'Angelo had lost his way.

But ths composer had found his, in the most sublime fashion.