Vivaldi - New Discoveries II

Will we ever hear Feraspe, the last opera Vivaldi composed for Venice, in the autumn of 1739? Or the patriotic strains of the Adelaide he presented in Verona in 1735? Will we have the good fortune of discovering at last those 'Brno' violin concertos of whose existence we learn and whose incipits we may read in an inventory of 1752 but which, like the two operas mentioned, are today lost? Examination of the Ryom catalogue1 reveals so many losses amid the prolific output of the indefatigable Venetian that one catches oneself dreaming of all those buried treasures, hopelessly missing pieces from one of the most fascinating jigsaw puzzles in musical history. Fortunately, the most recent discoveries, some due to kindly chance, others to the tireless prospecting work of Vivaldian archaeologists, keep one's optimism alive. It must be said that the new millennium began under favourable auspices with the unearthing of the score of Motezuma in Kiev and the arias of La costanza trionfante in Gloucestershire, then a Dixit Dominus and a Nisi Dominus in Dresden, followed by the discovery of fragments of Argippo in Regensburg. And the pace has shown no signs of slowing down since then. Three years after the release of the CD New Discoveries, which enriched the Vivaldi Edition with an initial selection of miraculously recovered gems, the harvest is again abundant enough to nourish a second volume of Vivaldian revelations. And we may marvel anew at these jewels that have escaped from their long oblivion and have been unearthed for us all over Europe.



The Vivaldi Edition, a recording venture conceived by the Italian musicologist Alberto Basso and the independent label Naïve, is one of the most ambitious recording projects of the twenty-first century.
Its principal objective is to record the massive collection of Vivaldi autograph manuscripts preserved today in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, some 450 works. Incredibly, this is the private library of scores Vivaldi had at home at the time of his death in Vienna in 1741 and includes his extant operas, hundreds of concertos, sacred compositions and cantatas. Much of this music has not been heard since the 18th century.
Follows a list of the works available at the moment: