- View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1964 Vinyl release of La Fida Ninfa on Discogs. Vivaldi. – La Fida Ninfa Label: VOX (6) – DLBX 210 Series: Musica Rediviva (3) – Format: 3.
- Griselda (Italian pronunciation: ɡriˈzɛlda) is a dramma per musica in three acts that was composed by Antonio Vivaldi.The opera uses a revised version of the 1701 Italian libretto by Apostolo Zeno that was based on Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron (X, 10, 'The Patient Griselda'). The celebrated Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni was hired to adapt the libretto for Vivaldi.
Apple Musicでアンサンブル・マテウス & ジャン=クリストフ・スピノジの「Vivaldi: La fida ninfa」を聴こう。'La fida ninfa: Sinfonia, RV 725: I. Allegro'や'La fida ninfa: Sinfonia, RV 725: II. La Fida Ninfa is a very fine italian opera and the artists are excellent. For Opera's lovers. La Fida Ninfa is a story of nymphs, gods, shepherds, and pirates, and a libretto quite ambitious to put them together in a tale puzzling to decipher. But never mind the complex plot, Vivaldi wrote very fabulous music to make sense out of it all!
Antonio Vivaldi wrote La fida ninfa on a tight deadline, having replaced the original composer late in the day. The opera was commissioned to inaugurate the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona and its 1732 première was a resounding success. The driving force behind the new theatre, respected historian and influential dramatist Scipione Maffei, also co-financed the extravagant production and stellar cast. Maffei also penned the libretto, whose overwrought plot taxes credibility, even allowing for contemporary conventions. Besides Licori, the universally desired titular nymph, there is her sister and rival Elpina, their shepherd father, and two brothers with the same name. They are all kidnapped at some point, because the plot needs them to converge on the island of Naxos, which is ruled by an explosive pirate-tyrant.
At home in Skyros, Licori once promised herself to Osmino. Torn apart, they meet years later, but she does not recognise him, chiefly because he now goes by the name Morasto. She falls in love with a shepherd, who later turns out to be Osmino’s younger brother, chiefly because their parents had renamed him Osmino. Meanwhile, back at the olive grove…
The flummoxing plot is redeemed by Vivaldi’s exquisite score, one long enchanting pastorale, which has survived intact, except for the opening sinfonia. Last Saturday, the opera’s Dutch première borrowed the stirring sinfonia from Bajazet. La fida ninfa combines instantaneous melodic appeal with deeply felt sentiment. Heartache, jealousy, homesickness: Vivaldi captures their essence with an economy of harmonic colours that keeps the music buoyant. Unusually for the time, he also adds a trio and a quartet, and flavours proceedings with a number of short arias. Conducting from the harpsichord, Andrea Marcon chose unhurried tempi that allowed the score to exhale its sensuousness. The musicians of La Cetra played with elegant precision and, when things became fast and furious, retained crisp rhythmic articulation. Nothing ever felt rushed or sluggish. The supple strings had a rosily warm sound, and the solos were one delight after another, from the molten horns in the overture to the sparkling theorbos.
The allure and pathos of the title role stemmed from María Espada’s soft, round soprano. Although her coloratura was impressive, her voice lost its contours the higher and faster it went, and lyrical moments such as the deeply dejected “Amor mio, la crude sorte” suited her best. Franziska Gottwald was a vivacious Elpina, especially nuanced in the recitatives. In her arias she wielded her compact, dark-brown mezzo with style and technical assurance. Equally perceptive with the text was Topi Lehtipuu as the sisters’ father, Narete. The tenor gets the longest aria, the plangently gorgeous “Deh, ti piega, deh consenti”, in which Narete begs the corsair to free his family. With his youthful, gracile voice Mr Lehtipuu was a sweet-toned Narete, although his vocal emission was uneven and some of his runs over-aspirated.
As Morasto, Roberta Invernizzi cleared all obstacles in her technically demanding part, completing a veritable coloratura marathon in “Destino amaro”. Her tangy, well-projected soprano gained tragic undertones as her character was overcome with despair and her suicide aria “Dite, ohimè, ditelo al fine”, with tearful theorbo accompaniment, was sublime tenderness. Luca Tittoto’s bronze-coloured bass had the right heft for Oralto, the pirate everyone loves to hate. He handled the wide range of the part with ease, and blustered heroically through his fury-fuelled arias. But this tyrant burns with love as well as ire, and Mr Tittoto also had the required mellowness. Countertenor Carlos Mena gave an all-round superb performance, investing the younger brother, Osmino, with brazen confidence and a vigorous vocal presence. His love aria “Ah! ch’io non posso lasciar d’amare”, was a demonstration of the expressive power of the da capo aria: 1. Let an accomplished singer lance through to the emotional centre in the first part. 2. Let him pull the audience into the character’s thought whorls in the middle section. 3. Let him further dissect the emotional kernel in the third section, making the audience forget they are listening to a reprise with variations, attaining such a degree of intimacy that they almost feel they are intruding. 4. Expect wonderstruck applause.
After all the muddles are cleared up and Licori is reunited with the right Osmino, the nymphs and shepherds decide to sail home, but a storm threatens their safety. Übergoddess Juno herself descended to the rescue in the shape of regal-voiced Romina Basso. The deus ex machina was accompanied by tempest music and much rumbling on the thunder sheet. Her secret weapon, Aeolus, commander of the winds, was a sonorous Ismael Arróniz holding his own against a raging wind machine. At this point, one wished someone would stage this opera, just for the special effects, although, as this performace proved yet again, Vivaldi’s music is pure pageantry. Many in the audience will be looking forward to more Vivaldi under Andrea Marcon next season at the Concertgebouw, when Roman republicans and imperialists lock horns in Catone in Utica.
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at Dutch National OperaFloris Visser’s staging transforms Vivaldi’s biblical oratorio into a credible wartime drama. The young cast is proficient, and La Cetra Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Andrea Marcon, nothing short of miraculous.
Planets to the skies
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CD Review
Vivaldi La Fida Ninfa Naive
Antonio Vivaldi
La fida ninfa
- Véronica Cangemi, soprano (Morasto)
- Sandrine Piau, soprano (Licori)
- Marie-Nicole Lemieux, alto (Elpina)
- Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor (Osmino)
- opi Lehtipuu, tenor (Narete)
- Lorenzo Regazzo, bass (Oralto)
- Christian Senn, bass (Eolo)
Ensemble Matheus/Jean-Christophe Spinosi
Opus 111/Naïve OP30410 3CDs
Choosy. The Vivaldi Edition is a joint venture of the Italian musicologist, Alberto Basso, and the independent Naïve label. Its ultimate goal is to record all 450 autograph works of the composer as now collected in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria in Turin, where they have been at various stages of editing and publishing since the 1930s. The project issued its first CD in 2000 and is expected to continue until 2015 with many of the works made available for the first time since the eighteenth century. Even were it not for the quality of the recordings, this would be an enterprise to be supported given the current state of the recording industry, and the almost continual delight in 'new' and otherwise unknown compositions by Vivaldi; these seem to serve only to elevate his standing with lovers of Baroque and wider music alike.
La fida ninfa (The faithful nymph), RV714, is a dramma per musica in three acts to a libretto, written 30 years previously, by Francesco Scipione Maffei. It was first performed in Maffei's home town, Verona, at the Teatro della Accademia Filarmonica there in 1732; at the theater's inauguration, in fact. For this recording La fida ninfa forms Volume 11 of the Vivaldi Edition's theatrical works. That Vivaldi's operas are of the same quality as the instrumental works for which he is better known bears repeating. If there's any justice in the world, they will achieve an analogous popularity to that which those of Handel have done in the past couple of generations.
For the music in La fida ninfa is full of melody, depth, pathos, invention and originality of instrumentation, vocal expressiveness and dramatic impact from beginning to end. So much so that, thanks to the perceptive and measured conception and direction of conductor Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Ensemble Matheus and the seven soloists, the work would make an excellent introduction for anyone open to expanding their appreciation of Vivaldi beyond his concerti; or for anyone who might have fallen for the canard that Vivaldi lacked, shall we say, sustained creative drive. After all, the operas (49 have so far been identified and authenticated) that Vivaldi wrote and produced between 1713 (the date of Otone in villa) and 1741 were hugely successful throughout (northern) Italy and beyond.
The circumstances of Vivaldi's commission and his otherwise fully committed workload meant that La fida ninfa had to be composed in a rush – as was so often the case with Baroque theatrical pieces. Verona was the Veneto's (the region in which Venice is situated) second city; the prestige of the Accademia was significant. To say that Maffei's pastoral libretto (brothers on Naxos unaware of their kinship) is 'slight' is not too much of a slur. And that Vivaldi made something beautiful and significant of it no exaggeration.
Vivaldi La Fida Ninfa Youtube
Examples of Vivaldi's genius for extracting musically compelling invention from stock situations and characters abound. Osmino's aria 'Qual serpe tortuoso' [CD.2 tr.17] is an example: overlaid on the perhaps somewhat 'worn' biblical metaphor of the threat of the snake, Vivaldi has string triplets evoke sinuousness. But in a new and unique way. Surprisingly original and effectively. And squeezed for all he is worth by Philippe Jaroussky's perceptive countertenor too. But it's not that moments like these that carry an otherwise sagging whole. Although (almost) every number stands in its own right, it's the feeling at the end of each act, and of the whole opera, that something purposeful and fully indicative of the emotions, foibles and changes in attitude on the part of the characters has happened. And, until the last note of the work has sounded, that more such is inevitably to come. Yes, there is urgency and forward momentum. But it's the ways in which Spinosi and his strong cast of soloists and instrumentalists respect Vivaldi's modest intentions that make the performance such a success. No attempt to add, edit or abbreviate the vision which Vivaldi clearly allowed to inform his composition, however much it was written (to his mind, probably) for one occasion only.
Contemporary accounts of the performances in January 1732 suggest that the original singers found Vivaldi's writing for them somewhat challenging. Here Spinosi's success has been to assemble musicians who work as a team; yet the members of which each bring something clear, insightful and accomplished in their accounts. Indeed, at times one is struck by a slightly over-zealous commitment to the enterprise. A touch of breathiness or over-articulation in order to communicate an unfamiliar story. But these moments are few and do not detract. The beauty of Vivaldi's writing wins through repeatedly. It's not conventionally sumptuous; just transparently 'fetching' in the way that Mozart's or Britten's operatic writing is. Elemental.
Vivaldi La Fida Ninfa Handlung
Nor is it only the presence of fewer da capo arias than usual that move the performance along. Spinosi is on top of every judgement of tempo without ever rushing. Such ruminative passages as the duet between Narete and Osmino in the third act's scene seven [CD.3 tr.13], for example, retain every drop of tenderness despite a sense of urgency otherwise induced by the tension of the situation. In all such moments (indeed throughout their arias and recitatives generally) each of the singers brings an individual personality and musical depth to their respective roles. Véronica Cangemi, Sandrine Piau and Topi Lehtipuu are particularly worthy of praise for their command of the at times difficult melodic lines; and for conferring upon their characters such conviction and believability.
The three-CD set comes with an excellent, well-produced and at times sardonically, though always appropriately and informatively written, booklet with the full libretto in French and English as well as the original Italian; details of the artists and useful background to the work and its historical context are there too. Given that La fida ninfa will be new territory for many, this is welcome. The acoustic of the Église Notre-Dame du Liban, Paris, is perhaps a little more 'contained' than one might expect for an opera on this scale. But it works: we are able to concentrate without distractions on the soloists' every phrase, their interaction with the instrumentalists and indeed on the impact made by the few tutti and choruses which the opera contains.
No-one who's been collecting the operas, and instrumental issues, in the Vivaldi Edition need hesitate before buying La fida ninfa, then. Anyone who's yet to be convinced of the profundity and beauty of the composer's operas would find this a compelling start to their conversion. Those who simply respond to outstanding Baroque singing and playing over an extended work which makes the most of its somewhat amateur libretto will not be disappointed. Warmly recommended.
Copyright © 2009, Mark Sealey