Orlando furioso

First staged at the Teatro S. Angelo in Venice in the autumn of 1727, Orlando furioso marks the midpoint of Vivaldi’s operatic career. This musical and dramatic masterpiece offers a daring synthesis of older Venetian traditions with the theatrical discoveries Vivaldi had made during the first half of his career. With more varied musical forms, a less rigid hierarchy of characters, and superimposing several layers of dramatic action at once, Vivaldi spoke with a truly original voice. The libretto draws on several episodes from Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando furioso (1532) familiar from later dramatic settings by Handel and others. The knight Orlando loves Angelica, but she marries her lover Medoro, sending Orlando mad with jealousy. Meanwhile Ruggiero, enchanted by the evil sorceress Alcina, is saved by his fiancée Bradamante with the help of a magic ring. Ultimately, Alcina is defeated, and Orlando—magically restored to sanity by his cousin Astolfo—blesses the marriage of Angelica and Medoro. The mixture of magic, heroic and comic elements in the libretto provided opportunities for some powerful musical effects. Orlando’s tragic descent into madness is charted entirely in heightened speech-like recitative, with a rapid juxtaposition of unrelated ideas but not an aria in sight. Although most of the arias sung by other characters are scored for strings, Vivaldi’s subtle sense of instrumental colour could transform the ordinary into the magical, as in Ruggiero’s “Sol da te mio dolce amore” where he marks the violins to be muted, while some of the bass instruments pluck and some of them bow—leaving the harpsichords completely silent.