The musical world owes a great debt of thanks to the Vivaldi Project on Naive as it edges ever closer to fulfilling its mission to record around 450 Vivaldi works located in the National University Library of Turin, and not simply for the number of premiere recordings of long-forgotten works it's chalked up. Also because of the quality of each new offering in purely musical terms, often from veritable dream teams of artists. Truly, Vivaldi has shone, and Il tamerlano is no exception to that rule.
Premiered in Verona in 1735, Il Tamerlano – also known as Bajazet after the Ottoman sultan who Tuco-Mongul emperor Timur (Tamerlano) kidnaps - is a pasticcio: a musical patchwork drawing on arias from multiple other works, and which in this case saw Vivaldi cherry-picking not just from his own operas but also inserting up to ten further arias by the likes of Geminiano Giacomelli, Johann Adolf Hasse and Riccardo Broschi. These Vivaldi then tied together with freshly written recitatives. The present recording also “reconstructs” five arias which were not in the score but were certainly sung in 1735.
Artists-wise, it's a stellar line-up: Ottavio Dantone and his Accademia Bizantina for the tenth time in this series (not all of which has been opera, and if you want to hear them strutting their brilliant stuff in purely instrumental repertoire then head to the six late “Per il castello” violin concertos they recorded with violinist Alessandro Tampieri); then baritone Bruno Taddia as Bajazet, countertenor Filippo Mineccia as Tamerlano, along with mezzos Sophie Rennert and Marina de Liso, soprano Arianna Vendittelli and contralto Delphine Galou. As for the actual music-making, in orchestral terms the opening sinfonia says its all: Vivaldian rhythmic punch and exuberance for the fortes, contrasting with softer-focus passages of delicately airy elegance in which theorbo rises deliciously to the fore, while metre chugs along in perkily precise manner one moment, before being dramatically stretched or paused the next. Vocally speaking meanwhile, the treats keep coming, not least from golden-toned and elegantly feisty Mineccia - for instance in his Act 1 “Vedeste mai sul prato”. Or flip to the third act for a sublime “Son tortorella” from a ravishingly pure-toned Sophie Rennert as Irene, whose beautifully controlled vocal embellishments are further set off by the poeticism coming from the orchestra's softly cooing recorders, and from its strings shining in the barely-there chamber textures.
Essentially, another Vivaldi opera revived to perfection. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz