Antonio Vivaldi, Dorilla in Tempe (1726)

Ain't no valdi like a Vivaldi 'cause a Vivaldi...okay, I have to admit, I didn't adequately consider how I was going to end this sentence.

This is a pastoral piece: Dorilla, the daughter of Admeto, King of Thessaly, is in love with a shepherd, Elmiro. But wait: there's another shepherd in love with her, Nomio, and he's actually Apollo in disguise. Oh yeah, and there's also Eudamia, in love with Elmiro, and Filindo, in love with Eudamia, but their role is pretty tangential. Admeto is ordered by the gods (O those zany gods) to sacrifice his daughter to a sea serpent, but Nomio kills it. As reward, he asks to be allowed to marry Dorilla; she and Elmiro try to run away, but they're captured and Elmiro's going to be executed until Nomio reveals himself in his divine glory and decides, okay okay, Elmiro and Dorilla should be married after all, and as reward for his constancy, Eudamia should marry Filindo. I don't think that last is a good message, and I have my doubts about the long-term viability of this relationship, but there you go.

A lot of fun, is what this is. It maybe takes a while to get going, and I'm a little disappointed by the distinct lack of countertenors in this production, but it's all good.  Probably not quite Orlando Furioso level, but that would be asking a lot.  Seriously, though: the only role here played by a dude is Admeto, and it's odd: you get the impression that composers felt some sort of obligation to include the one low-voiced role in their operas. You don't have to if you don't want to, guys! Maybe it's just so the high voices stand out more in comparison.

The interesting thing about this is that the original score for this isn't extant: the surviving version comes from a pastiche version from 1734 that cuts out some of Vivaldi's music and sticks in arias from various other popular composers of the time. The purist may complain, but I would challenge this purist to identify which parts are Vivaldi and which not--and this purist must provide very detailed explanations, or I shall be forced to call bullshit. Hey, there's a lot of classical music of disputed authorship; it's really not the case that someone sufficiently expert can identify the composer of a piece one hundred percent of the time. Anyway, the other composers whose work is used here are--per wikipedia--Johann Adolph Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli, and Leonardo Leo. I wasn't familiar with any of these gentlemen, but now I want to see operas by all of them.