For those unaware, this new recording in the Edition Vivaldi series - the first of two volumes dedicated to Vivaldi’s cantate da camera for soprano - displays the energetic vitality with which a new generation of artists in their thirties is encountering the baroque repertoire.

This sixty-eighth album of the Edition highlights the expressively powerful voice of the soloist, soprano Arianna Vendittelli, already heard in the operas Il Tamerlano (2020) and Il Giustino (2018) conducted by Ottavio Dantone, as well as the artistic vision and high standards of the harpsichordist, organist and conductor Andrea Buccarella; who in 2018 carried off the first prize at the Bruges International Early Music Competition with his Abchordis Ensemble.

1. Allor che lo sguardo, RV650
2. Aure, voi pie non siete, RV652
3. Tra l’erbe i zeffiri RV669
4. Sorge vermiglia in ciel la bella Aurora RV667
5. La farfalletta s’aggira al lume RV660
6. Si levi dal pensier, RV 665

Within these six cantatas - of which some thirty can be attributed to the Venetian master and composed between 1718 and the mid-1730s - the absorbingly engaging quality and personality of Vendittelli’s soprano is truly one to fall in love with.

Thus, and at all times, and with its core subject of love - in all its guises - sewn throughout, Vendittelli’s personalized pastoral cantatas of love emanate a rich wealth of empathy and seductive warmth that is simply breathtaking to behold.

Opening with the impassioned trio within Allor che lo sguardo, RV650, the recitative showcases Vendittelli’s impressive meditation to line form, whilst using notes in the lower register and that is followed by a rather melancholy register used within the quartet of Aure, voi pie non siete, RV652.

Then come two lighter arias within the trio of Tra l’erbe i zeffiri RV669 and the markedly dramatic quartet Sorge vermiglia in ciel la bella Aurora RV667, with this magnificent new collection rounding out on the rhythmic inventiveness of the trio within La farfalletta s’aggira al lume RV660, closing on the support - as throughout - of members from the Abchordis Ensemble on the rousingly spirited threesome within Si levi dal pensier, RV 665.

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