All of the singers here reasonably acquit themselves well in the task. The very idea of making up a disc out of Vivaldi opera arias already constitutes sending even the best of singers through a musical minefield, owing to his impossibly ornate and florid vocal writing. Take for example the imitations of bird song in Quell'augellin, the stealthy sneakiness of 'Mio cor s'ioi ti credessi,' or the genuinely bizarre practice of combining two singers on the same music, with different texts, in D'improvviso riede il riso.

Throughout the disc, Vivaldi's keen imagination, thirst for variety, and genius for unusual effects are on full display one almost doesn't need to hear the operas from which these arias come to understand what is going on, so bold are the strokes of text painting employed. The effervescent verve and inexhaustible energy of Vivaldi's music ultimately win out, and the pace picks up radically with Piau's rendering of 'Usignoli che piangete,' an aria that makes use of vocal accellerandi of exactly the kind associated with mid-twentieth century composers such as Lutoslawski. The musical accompaniment is provided by period instrument ensemble Modo Antiquo in editions prepared by its leader, Federico Maria Sardelli.Īria d'Opera dal fondo Foà 28 gets off to kind of a slow start, as both singers and ensemble seem to be sneaking up on the music, as though not wanting to make mistakes and at the same time being a little scared of it.

Cecilia Bartoli recorded a few pieces from Foà 28 on her The Vivaldi Album, and one of these is repeated here, but the remaining 15 selections are split between soprano Sandrine Piau, mezzo-sopranos Ann Hallenberg and Guillemette Laurens, and tenor Paul Agnew. Naïve's Aria d'Opera dal fondo Foà 28 gathers a number of singers in performances of pieces taken from the National Library of Turin's Vivaldi manuscript identified by its shelfmark as 'Foà 28.' This manuscript, assembled by Antonio Vivaldi himself, is a collection of 47 arias and ensemble pieces taken from various operas it is so obscure that many of the operas from which these arias are taken are yet unidentified, and its list of contents wasn't even published until 1998.