Free Republic

The long-neglected manuscripts of volume 28 of the Foà collection in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin preserve one of the most fascinating aspects of Vivaldi's operatic output: the composer's personal collection of opera arias. This anthology comprises forty-seven arias and ensembles, most composed by Vivaldi between 1717 and 1721. Some are drafts, variants or simply copies of pieces that also feature in the scores of complete operas preserved in Turin. Others, however, have no known duplicate or variant. Detailed examination of them has enabled musicologists, led by Peter Ryom, to link them to several lost operas of which they now...