Symfonische muziek

The opera Dorilla in Tempe, which was first performed in Venice in 1726, exudes a delightful rural atmosphere. The libretto tells a bucolic story set in a valley of Thessaly. Between amorous twists and a huge sacrifice, the various misadventures of Dorilla offer Vivaldi the occasion to deploy a luminous sound palette where hunting horns and flutes often support choruses and soloists. He resumed the work in 1728, still in Venice, then again in 1732 in Prague and one last time in 1734 at "his" theatre - Sant’Angelo. Only this 1734 version has reached us, and so it serves as a basis for present recordings. It is a "pasticcio", for which Vivaldi used various composers - Hasse, Giacomelli, Sarri and Leo in this case - whose melodies replace some of his own; about a third of them are borrowed from colleagues in fact. It was never Vivaldi’s intention to recycle on the sly: the principle of "pasticcio" was the most widespread at the time and very popular with the public. The particularly rare vocal timbres are noticeable: they are made up of almost exclusively deep voices, including three mezzos and one baritone and even two deep castratos, nowadays replaced by contraltos who are much easier to dig up. The entire score gives off a mad energy; a delightful peculiarity adorns part of the opening, in which Vivaldi takes over one of the movements with his Four Seasons with the addition of a choir - proof that even though this music is rich at the base, it can still be further enriched, provided your name is Vivaldi! Diego Fasolis and his ensemble I Barrochisti offer us here one of the very, very rare discographical performances of this neglected masterpiece. © SM/Qobuz

As a casual victim of circumstances – jealousy, denigration and low blows − Johann David Heinichen’s opera Flavio Crispo was never performed during its composer’s life; during repetitions in Dresden, insults flew back and forth between him and some Italian singers, which led the piece to be removed from the programme and never completed. Although in reality, only a few pages of music are missing from the integral score... Consequently, this is the first discographic publication of the opera, with the complete music composed in 1720. It reveals a composer at ease in both the sharp and complex language of Germanic tradition, and the formal and vocal freedom of Italian opera – which Heinichen had studied closely during a long stay in Venice. There, he met the Elector of Saxony (Frederick Augustus II of Saxony) and future King of Poland (Augustus III of Poland), who hired him to his court in Dresden, at the time one of the largest hubs in European culture. Heinichen soon took up the torch from Antonio Lotti who had composed Italian operas for the court of Dresden for a few years, and his Flavio Crispo was meant to be his contribution to the genre. But unlike Lotti, Heinichen called upon a highly-flavoured orchestra: horns, oboes, flutes, in addition to strings and continuo, and winds to which he gives a fair amount of highly-virtuosic movements. Unfortunately for the composer, he was never able to hear his masterpiece, as the King of Poland dismissed the few Italian singers who had risen up against the partition under a futile pretence; no one else was able to sing these roles, and the score fell into obscurity. This was until it was rediscovered and showcased by the ensemble Il Gusto Barocco and its music director Jörg Halubek, in a 2015 live recording. At long last, Herr Heinichen! © SM/Qobuz