Arie D'opera

This CD is another in the ongoing series of recordings of Vivaldi's music found in manuscripts that reside in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin. The project apparently hopes to record all of the treasures held therein. The music here comes from a collection of 47 arias composed by Vivaldi between 1717 and 1721 for various of his operas. According to the scholarly booklet notes, 'Some are drafts, variants or simply copies of pieces that also feature in the scores of complete operas [by Vivaldi] conserved in Turin.' The musicians involved here are the wonderful baroque group Modo Antiquo, directed by Federico Maria Sardelli, and four vocal soloists: Sandrine Piau, soprano; Ann Hallenberg, mezzo; Paul Agnew, tenor; and Guillemette Laurens, mezzo. They are all fine singers, but this is Piau's show. This wonderful soprano, known to us primarily for her work with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, sings in six of the sixteen arias and ensembles contained here. Most astonishing is the Nightingale Aria 'Usignoli che piangete' from 'Candace.' In it she imitates the song of the nightingale, complete with eerily effective rapid-fire repeated notes in alt. Another 'bird' song, also sung by Piau, is 'Quell'augellin' that pits an ornithological violin solo (played brilliantly by Modo Antiquo's unnamed concertmaster) against the soprano's fioriture.

The other soloists have their day in the sun. Paul Agnew, a familiar voice in baroque recordings, sings the graceful shepherd's plaint 'Sei tiranna se un ben fedel' from 'La Silva.' Ann Hallenberg's rich mezzo is heard to great advantage in 'Se fido revedrò' from the little that remains of Vivaldi's 'Medea e Giasone'; in it, Medea is disguised as a man, looking for her unfaithful lover, Jason, declaring her fidelity to him and the joy she will feel if she finds him. The other mezzo (actually a contralto), Guillemette Laurens is heard only in the quartet 'Anima del cor mio' from 'La Candace' and in two duets.

This is a rewarding collection of arias and ensembles, some of them familiar, most of them not. But they are all vintage Vivaldi. Sound is lifelike, with voices slightly to the fore.

Recommended.

Scott Morrison

This selection of Vivaldi arias is a mouth watering collection of tracks meant to show off the quality of not only the performers but what seems to be a whole new approach by Naïve Classics to recording classical music in the high-def digital age. And for those of us who've grown up with the classical music bug, this represents the most exciting advances in getting the consumers the best products we've seen in ages. If you buy this set, you're going to buy more. You won't be able to stop yourself.

The performance:

The Naïve crew scores big. Ann Hallenberg and Guillemette Laurens perform with grace and conviction that, to my ears are the finest performances of Baroque singing. Period. The problem is now I have to go buy the full recordings of all these works. Their intonation is flawless. phrasing is ...well, flawless. They feel what they are singing and push their performances to the top, without over going over. No screeching. Not even close. Sandrine Piau is another treasure. Executes the runs like a young Joan Sutherland. The tenor Paul Agnew is good, but not in the same class as the female performers. To my ears, he doesn't have the energy the other soloists. I don't understand Italian, and for the first time when listening to Italian opera, there is so much virtuosity, I don't care! "Dar La Morte A Te Mia Vita" and "D'Improvviso Riede Il Riso" are as catchy as any pop tune on the radio.

But wait! It's not all about the vocals. Modo Antiquo accompanies brilliantly. Federico Maria Sardelli is a true Renaissance man. He conducts, plays the flute, paints & writes. So when you hear his work as represented on this CD, you are getting a aural painting with a conductor who uses a baton like a paint brush and produces a Michelangelo - I would say in the world of Baroque these are staggering masterpieces. He doesn't just run through these pieces and hope you'll go along for the ride. These interpretations are drawing you into something really intimate. He's illuminating the mind and heart of Vivaldi. Like Alessandrini, he knows a melodic hook when he hears one. It is rare to hear conductors that use actually dynamics and variations in tempo with Baroque works, but Sardelli gives us more than our moneys worth. A recording that's a privilege to listen to? Yeah. Get's my vote.

The sound:

As good as the performers are, half of why these Naïve Vivaldi recordings sound so delicious is the engineering. I don't know if the same engineers are doing all the Naïve Vivaldi edition recordings, but there is an evenness and consistency to the quality of sound, and it is worth paying for. The vocals are close and warm, but still have a pleasant reverb and presence. The performer's diction is clear, and they are miked properly so you understand every word - every syllable. The balance between soloists and orchestra is spot on. The sound stage is open, detailed, and clear as a whistle. The label is onto something. If that isn't enough, they record in 96khz/24 bit audiophile sound. What that translates to for folks with really good stereo systems is life-like, three-dimensional sound and presence - the next big advancement in recorded sound.

In the "Zefiretti Che Sussurate," I'm not sure how they did it but at one point in the aria there is a echo effect that had me giggling like a school girl. I don't know if they're using a delay and multi-track recording or just placing another singer in the distance, but I can't help thinking - it seems like someone (Naïve) is FINALLY ready to take advantages of modern recording and engineering technology and give us a product modern listeners want. Vivaldi, was after all a priest and a rock star. Now Naïve needs to help lead the charge with losing the limitation of compact disc and making high-def FLAC files available either on USB or for download on the web.

A word about the packaging.

Love, love, love it. I've seen comment to the effect that some people don't like it, or find it distracting. For the younger audience. I'm sorry. Naïve is a French company. The people that give us wine, pastry, French cooking, and Paris chic and fashion. The models got my attention, and I suppose the company is out to prove that you can judge a book by it's cover. What this shows the a level of design (something in the French do REALLY well) that carries through every detail of what you take out of the box. The look, the sound, the feel. The liner notes are detailed, readable, and as good as what we used to get back in the vinyl days. (I do wish classical labels would start giving us visually challenged folks .pdf files or a web page we could go to get print big enough to read.) So go ahead, Naïve. You keep putting the models on the covers, giving us booklets we can actually read, and the best Vivaldi recordings on the market. I'll eventually own them all. British invasion? This time, I think France gets a turn.

... from the ongoing "Vivaldi Edition" of opera recordings produced by Naïve. It stands alone as a recital of 16 of the 47 arias that Vivaldi himself assembled, probably in 1721-22 in preparation for travel to the North in search of opportunity. Some of these arias are indeed to be found in complete operas - in La Candace, Tito Manlio, La Verità in Cimento, etc. -- but some of them have no other recognized source except the manuscripts of "Volume 28" of the Foà collection in the national library of Turin. One can speculate that Vivaldi prepared this compendium as a"sample kit" of his music, since the arias are remarkably diverse both in affect and in musical effects. Or perhaps he wanted such material at hand for creating a "pastiche" opera on short notice. Whatever their purpose, these arias were carefully copied out, annotated, and sorted into subgroups. They represent the full spectrum of vocal registers, keys and tempi, styles of orchestration, and psychological mood found in Vivaldi's vast oeuvre of operas and cantata-like works: laments and exaltations, sobs of remorse and shrieks of rage, accusations and confessions; tempests, bird songs, echos, clarion calls to arms; brilliant obbligato writing for violins, oboes, flutes, and sopranino recorder played by Modo Antiquo conductor Federico Maria Sardelli himself. Played inconceivably well, I humbly add, more nimbly than I could hope to play it on my best day.

The singers are the phenomenal Sandrine Piau, soprano; the mellifluous Ann Hallenberg, mezzosoprano; and the artful Paul Agnew, tenor. Mezzo Guillemette Laurens joins the ensemble on sveral duets in a gorgeous quartet from "La Candace". Piau is almost too fine to describe; her coloratura is as sweet and as agile as any little bird or flauto dolce. Hallenberg's glory is her marvelous timbres. Paul Agnew is much better known as a singer of French Baroque, for which his voice is perfectly suited. It's not the melt-in-your-ear gondolier tenor more suited for Italian opera, but Agnew's musicianship is so well-founded that he carries his weight even in the company of Piau and Hallenberg. In Foà 28, by the way, there are only four arias specifically for tenor and just one for basso; sopranos and altos, both male and female, dominated the baroque opera stage. It's quite well documented that some of these 'soprano' arias, sung so virtuosically by Sandrine Piau, were composed to suit the talents of identified castrati, and on the basis of weak inference and wishful thinking, some "critics" have asserted that the voices Vivaldi heard were bigger and plummier than what we today hear from countertenors like Philippe Jaroussky or even from a light/clear soprano like Piau. I need only one piece of evidence to dismiss that assertion: this performance. Listen to Sandrine Piau; can you honestly imagine that any other vocal technique would express this music more effectively?

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