Search - Vivaldi, Zadori, Nemeth :: Vivaldi: Juditha Triumphans

Vivaldi Triumphant!

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 06/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Anyone whose impression of Vivaldi's musical genius is based merely on one or two performances of The Four Seasons, and who dismisses Vivaldi as a light-weight in comparison to Handel or Scarlatti, might want to hear this triumphant performance of the oratorio Juditha Triumphans. It's available in this original release and as part of the Brilliant Classics Vivaldi Masterworks box. The economics of that choice should be obvious.



Yes, there's a lot of Vivaldi's characteristic exuberance and pictorial showmanship to be heard in Juditha, but there are also arias of great emotional drama - vivid expressions of pride, anger, faith, and fear. The military set-pieces are as stirring as any of Handel's, and the psychological conflicts of motives in recitativo are as subtle as any of Scarlatti's. In short, this is a powerhouse of an oratorio.



Conductor Nick McGegan is as sure-footed with Vivaldi as he is with Handel, even though for this performance he's not leading his own Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. The singers, all women, all have not only the flexibility to sing Vivaldi's cascading sixteenth notes but also the ample voices to convey the Biblical grandeur of the oratorio text, based on the killing of King Holofernes by the heroine Judith. I see no reason, by the way, why this oratorio couldn't be dramatically staged, as Handel's Theodora has been, since for most audiences Latin is no more unintelligible than operatic Italian. Hooray for supertitles!



From International Record Review:

"...This is Vivaldi's best-known large-scale choral work today (and his only extant oratorio)... The work is emphatically patriotic in content, and retells the Apocrypha story of Judith and Holofernes in terms of Venice's then-current war with the Ottomans. Giacomo Cassetti's Latin libretto explicitly assigns equivalent roles, with heroine Judith as the Adriatic, the tyrant Holofernes as the Emperor of the Turks and so on, the victory of Judith presaging the triumph of the Venetian fleet. With a theme of such direct contemporary relevance, Vivaldi gives rein to a sequence of imaginatively scored arias of an operatic nature. ....As Juditha Triumphans was written for his pupils at the Venetian orphanage of the Ospedale della Pietà, all the solo roles are for high voices. As if to make up for this limited vocal palette, Vivaldi drew on the variety and talent of the celebrated Ospedale instrumentalists, and scored the work for recorders, oboes, chalumeaux, trumpets, drums, mandolin, theorbos, viola d'amore, solo organ, strings and continuo."



Note the implicit connection of this review, friends, with its reference to the Venetian musical orphanage, to my recent review of chamber concerts by Francesco Mancini, performed by Musica Pacifica. Mancini was himself the product of a musical orphanage in Naples."