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TITO MANLIO Financial Times 23rd February 2008 Andrew Clark If Antonio Vivaldi had peeked down from his heavenly perch at any time during the past two and a half centuries, he would surely have been surprised to find his reputation depending on a handful of instrumental concertos rather than the 50-odd operas with which he made his name. That may be changing. Thanks to the period movement, Vivaldi’s long-forgotten operas are resurfacing, and it’s good to find Italians pleading their case. Now that we have the chance to hear this music, questions about its value follow. Accademia Bizantina’s concert performance of Tito Manlio offered only partial answers. Composed for a royal wedding in Mantua that never took place, the opera follows a conventional plot-line about the tortuous paths of love, duty and fate in ancient Rome. There’s a protracted dungeon scene, making for an extremely long and static third act. The ending is quirky: the titular ruler can’t bring himself to forgive the son who has disobeyed him (Mozart’s Tito, by contrast, occupies a more exalted world). But in an imaginative production it could surely be made to work. As for the music, it’s good enough but not outstanding: none of the arias really strikes to the heart, and you would never know from Vitellia’s music that she was a malevolent schemer. The value of the score lies in its heroic arias for the leading castrati and in a succession of scene-stealing instrumental obbligati. One of the wonders of Vivaldi’s art is that those solo “voices” – guitar, recorder, trumpet, cello – are able to express themselves as effectively as the singing voice, an impression underlined by this taut, vibrant performance, led from the harpsichord by Ottavio Dantone. Vocal honours were shared by Karina Gauvin’s Manlio and Roberta Invernizzi’s Lucio, both making sure we heard the music and, where possible, the human sentiments, rather than the high technical hurdles of Vivaldi’s vocal writing. Ann Hallenberg’s Servilia – warm, velvety, dignified – was the other outstanding voice, while Carlo Lepore’s Tito made a solid anchor. |