L’Olimpiade by Rinaldo Alessandrini

This production of Vivaldi’s opera L’Olimpiade was orchestrated by Concerto Italiano and conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini.

The story of love, friendship and Olympics in this upbeat opera is great theme for a teenage movie.

The basic storyline is that young prince, Licida asks his best friend, Megacle who is talented athlete to compete in Olympics under his name. Megacle later learns that the award for the winner is the marriage to King’s daughter, Aristea. The thing Licida didn’t know was that Megacle and Aristea were lovers before being separated by his parents. Megacle suffers between his love for Aristea and his friendship for Licida because he swore his loyalty to Licida by whom his life was once saved …… .

Vivaldi filled this opera with many of his best arias.

Just like his Farnace conducted by Diego Fasolis, Rinaldo Alessandrini’s Vivaldi is also best de-café Vivaldi. Their music is not flashy or splashy or sparkling comparing to other Vivaldi conductors’. Their music is very mature, rich and highly polished.  Alessandrini’s orchestration also has the very interesting texture. It has the saturating shadow of summer afternoon shade. I’d never had the texture from any other conductors before. 

Contrasting to near perfection of his orchestration, his singers were not so strong in their singings. His orchestration had high quality that I found much less in the singers.

Soprano, Roberta Invernizzi sang the castrato role of Megacle. Her very beautiful light voice is like butterfly or balloon, which has neither weight nor depth. She sang as she’s reading a textbook with the rhythmic accents. Her role has number of virtuosic arias but as much as beautiful voice she has, they didn’t sound as virtuosic as they should. 

Contralto, Sonia Prina sang Aristea. She has deep, male-like decisive voice with good singing technique. This role gets least amount of good aria. Even then, she sang with neutral expression.

However, their duet “Ne’ giorni tuoi felici” was beautiful and emotionally heart felt.

Contralto, Sara Mingardo sang Licida. I thought her voice is rather dark and too thoughtful to sing this happy-go-lucky guy role but nevertheless, she sang her part really well. Especially she sang Vivaldi’s wonderful aria “Gemo in un punto e fremo” wonderfully.

Mezzo-soprano, Marianna Kulikova sang Argene. Her singing had emotional input but as the same way with Roberta Invernizzi, she also sang her arias with the monotone rhythmic accents. 

Soprano, Laura Giordano sang the castrato role of Licida’s uncle, Aminta. Her voice is much lighter and brighter than Roberta Invernizzi’s. Her voice also doesn’t have weight or depth and sounded almost too girlishly childish to sing the male guardian figure. Vivaldi often wrote highly technical virtuosic arias for side male roles such as Aminta. Laura Giordano rather sang such aria “Siam navi all’onde algenti” better but yet, it was not virtuosic enough.

Baritone, Riccardo Novaro sang Clisten. He has very good mature baritone voice and he sang his role very well.