Music: (About) 100 Words on Vivaldi’s Tito Manlio – Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone

Antonio Vivaldi
Tito Manlio
Accademia Bizantina
Ottavio Dantone
Naive 30413
2006

The '00s is the decade of Vivaldian opera as the 1990s was for the Hanelian opera. Naive Records is plowing throgh the Vivaldi corpus, sparing no opera. After very successful renderings of Orlando Furioso, Orlando Finto Pazzo, Juditha Triumphans, L'Oimpade, and La Verita in Cimento, Naive takes on the Tito canon, a story much different from Mozart's take, La Clemenza de Tito. Maestro Ottavio Dantone favors brisk tempi that allows the Red Priest's vocal scoring to breath. This is aided by superb soloists, experts in the Vivaldian opera. Naive engineering has gone a long way in capturing the warmth and minimizing the harshness of period instruments, making this recording a very fine one indeed.

© Copyright, C. Michael Bailey, 2006