RADIO LIVE (30’)
Antonio Vivaldi
Orlando, 1727
In 1727, approximately eighty years after Cavalli’s Il Giasone, Antonio Vivaldi composed Orlando for the Teatro Sant’Angelo (now vanished). We are now in the full flowering of baroque music and opera was by this time an established genre throughout Europe, following clear, precise rules based largely on the vocal qualities of famous and, at times, even idolised singers. The lecture, of course, focuses on the salient features of baroque opera: its dramaturgy based on the “theory of the affects”, the da capo aria, the “descriptive” use of the orchestra, and the often spectacular virtuosity of the singing.
