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Vivaldi: The Four Seasons - L''Estade Allegro non molto |
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[4:35] |
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RATING:
 
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Vivaldi: The Four Seasons - L''Autunno Allegro |
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[3:26] |
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RATING:
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Biography
During his lifetime, Vivaldi was esteemed primarily for his instrumental music, and in
particular for his many concertos. However, he was also a prolific composer of
operas - the art form par excellence of the period. According to his own account, he
wrote 94 and, though modern scholarship has detected only about fifty, still fewer -
sixteen - are extant, complete and performable. These operas have never been
successfully revived and. In view of the excellent quality of the music they contain, It
Is much to be regretted that they are still so little known.
Vivaldi''s sacred music is also relatively little known. In furore was probably intended
for the famous prima donna, Anna Giro a pupil of Vivaldi and later his assistant and
secretary. Carlo Goldoni wrote of her that she was a mediocre singer and musician
but a good actress. Yet her musical talent cannot have been that doubtful, bearing
in mind what technical feats the composer expected for a motet such as this.
L''Ioronazione di Dario was first performed in Venice at the Sant''Angelo Theatre
during the carnival of 1717. After the fashion of the time, the libretto, by one Adriano
Morselli, is a complex political plot concerning the fortunes of three pretenders to the
throne of the Persian King, Cyrus. However, the seriousness of the impending
drama is scarcely evident from the three brief movements of this bubbling overture.
Agitata da due venti is from La Griselda (an opera written for Venice in 1725). As
ever, the subject is love. In this Instance, the lover''s plight is likened to the buffeting
at sea experienced by the shipwrecked mariner, who is tossed by the wind first in
one direction and then in the other.
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