L'Olimpiade

Rivalry—athletic and romantic—is at the heart of Vivaldi’s sparkling 1734 opera L’Olimpiade. Princess Aristea is the prize for the victor in the Olympic Games. Licida loves her, but it’s Megacle who competes under his friend’s name: will he really hand over his prize—and former beloved—at the end? Add in Argane, Licida’s own spurned lover, and you have tangle of secret identities, long-lost fathers, and jealous flames that keeps the action coming. Pietro Metastasio’s libretto was one of the most popular of the period—it was premiered with music by Caldara in 1733, and subsequently set by other composers including Pergolesi, Galuppi, Cimarosa, and Cherubini. The twists and turns are crisply painted in recitative that’s alive with personality and the stop-start rhythms and false-starts of conversation. If the arias don’t quite chase the same emotional truth, they are among the composer’s most irrepressibly energetic and appealing—slow numbers are very much in the minority in an opera about the swift passions (and slow realizations) of youth. “Mentre dormi, amor fomenti” is the exception to the rule. Licida’s glowing sleep-aria is a moment of stillness that contrasts vividly with the wriggling virtuosity of his frenzied “Gemo in un punto e fremo.” Megacle voices his own conflicts in the expansive “Lo seguitai,” while Licida’s philosopher tutor Aminta unexpectedly seizes the spotlight with the showstopping storm aria “Siam navi.”