The violin sonatas RV 815 and RV 816 came to light only recently. They are found in a manuscript volume compiled in England around 1725 that once belonged to the collector Gerald Coke and is today preserved in the Foundling Museum, London. The sonatas are presented as keyboard music, but their rigorously two-part texture and some technical aspects identify the music as for violin and bass. They are relatively early compositions probably composed for an unknown amateur violinist. The three-movement C major sonata (RV 815) has some interesting structural features, while the four-movement D major sonata (RV 816) is most remarkable for its fantasia-like opening movement, composed entirely over a tonic pedal note.
Istituto: Antonio Vivaldi Institute
Il Tito. Libretto di Nicolò Beregan, musica di Antonio Cesti
Libretto by Nicolò Beregan, music by Antonio Cesti
Facsimile of the score with a critical edition of the libretto and an introductory essay by Giada Viviani
“Drammaturgia musicale veneta”, 5
Ricordi, Milan, 2012
First performed during the carnival season of 1666 at the Venetian theatre of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Il Tito, by Nicolò Beregan and Antonio Cesti, is an opera often cited in the musicological literature of the last forty years, since the archival material that has come down to us, besides documenting the genesis of the score with unusual precision, sheds light on details of fundamental importance for our understanding of the operation of impresarial opera in Venice during the second half of the seventeenth century. Despite the acknowledgement of the importance of this work, which arose from a collaboration between a widely admired, although not very prolific, librettist and one of the supreme composers of the period, a study of its literary and musical sources is still lacking. It is this lacuna that the new volume in the series “Drammaturgia musicale veneta” aims to fill, joining to a facsimile of the oldest of the manuscript scores of Tito, held by the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, a scrupulous critical edition of the libretto and a comparative examination of the two other musical sources that have come down to us, so as to present the fullest possible picture of the version performed in Venice in carnival 1666, which none of the extant sources transmits in its totality.
Unum panem
Mysterium, sacred cantata in parts VII for four solo voices chorus and orchestra, was composed by Nino Rota in 1962. It is one of the most impressive pieces of the entire catalog, both for artistic mass necessary to implement that for the duration of almost 70 ‘. Despite the excellent reception had by critics and the public, the objective difficulty dall’allestimento mail it has greatly reduced the chances of access to concert halls. This dual publishing allows the execution of one of the high points of the whole composition, the choir Unum panem that closes the first of the seventh party, with only organ accompaniment. The first version provides full voice staffed with the use of a boys choir and the four canonical parts of the chorus, the second is for male voices as well as had been requested by the Seminary of La Quercia Viterbo who commissioned it. Both versions of the Master’s hand.
L’incoronazione di Poppea
Libretto di Gian Francesco Busenello, musica di Claudio Monteverdi
Facsimile of the Naples score plus libretto edited by Lorenzo Bianconi, with introductory essays by Gino Benzoni and Alessandra Chiarelli
Drammaturgia musicale veneta, 2
Ricordi, Milan, 2011
L’incoronazione di Poppea (Venice 1643), a play by Giovan Francesco Busenello with music attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, has a very special place in the history of opera. It is in fact the first opera on a historical subject. Instead of Daphne, Orpheus and Adonis, the main characters are the Emperor Nero, the Empress Octavia, the Sabina courtesan Poppea and the philosopher Seneca. This book contains the manuscript score now in Naples, which like the manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, was copied by several hands: Francesco Cavalli, perhaps Benedetto Ferrari, and probably an Anonymous Neapolitan musician. The problematic issue of the relations between attribution, sources, versions and performances is addressed in the introductory pages by Alessandra Chiarelli, while Gino Benzoni describes the historical and cultural background to Busenello’s life and career, from the late 16th century to the 1750s.
Artaserse
Libretto by Pietro Metastasio and music by Baldassare Galuppi
Facsimile edition of the score and edition of the libretto, with an essay by Francesca Menchelli Buttini
«Drammaturgia musicale veneta», 20
Ricordi, Milan, 2010
The present volume in the series “Drammaturgia musicale veneta” is a facsimile reproduction of Baldassare Galuppi’s Artaserse, which was staged in 1749 in Vienna at the Burgtheater. This setting is noteworthy for showing the success that the composer enjoyed outside his native country, for employing the poetic and dramatic materials of one of the most famous librettos of Pietro Metastasio, and for lending a new aspect to the close of the fi rst act by inserting a quartet. The reproduction of the score is complemented by a transcription of the libretto in modern orthography, with the addition of a “Nota al testo” (“Notes on the Text”) section that explains its general criteria and clarifi es the relationship of the surviving sources. The introductory essay makes comment on the text and the music, illuminating the problem of the tradition relating to Artaserse with reference to the revivals of Galuppi’s music and to the subject of the relationship of the libretto to its own models; from there, it moves on to consider certain important aspects – the conclusion of the fi rst two acts; the figure of the villain; the opening scenes; the episode of the duet – in the perspective of the interrelationship between drama and music and between verbal, musical and visual meaning.
Torino musicale scrinium di Vivaldi
The documentary exhibition “Torino musicale scrinium di Vivaldi” opens Tuesday 14 February at the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin. Planned in concurrence with the XX Winter Olympics 2006, the exhibition displays autograph manuscripts by the great Venetian composer as well as written and figurative material related to his work in the field of music theatre. Integral to the exhibition is the section Antonio Vivaldi and his time, which has been brought to fruition by the Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute of the Giorgio Cini Foundation and presents documents on the work of Antonio Vivaldi that illustrate the environment in which he lived and the influence he had on European music.
The modern rediscovery of Antonio Vivaldi and the enormous diffusion of his work world-wide is unique in the annals of the music history. This phenomenon is due, in part, to the publication of his instrumental work undertaken by the Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute from 1947 on (more than 500 previously unpublished and virtually unknown concerts, symphonies and sonatas) and Vivaldi’s entire vocal oeuvre (in more than 100 editions), published after 1978, the year in which the Institute became part of the Giorgio Cini Foundation.
The section Antonio Vivaldi and his time has been curated by Maria Teresa Muraro and mounted on an installation by Maria Ida Biggi. It is addresses various themes illustrating Venetian theatres and set design in the second half of the 17th century, the cultural ambience in which Vivaldi lived, the musical activities at the “Ospitali”, Vivaldi’s instumental music, the places and theatres in which Vivaldi worked, set design in the first half of the 18th century, and Vivaldi’s last days.
Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria
14 February – 3 June 2006
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