VIVALDI : OTTONE IN VILLA

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 11th of December 2011 at 3.03 - 5.30 pm

INTRODUCTION 
PREVIEW
REVIEW

ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741)
Ottone in villa (RV729), an opera in three acts
Ottone.......................... Sonia Prina
Caio Silio...................... Julia Lezhneva
Cleonilla........................ Verónica Cangemi
Tullia............................. Roberta Invernizzi
Decio............................ Topi Lehtipuu
Il Giardino Armonico/Giovanni Antonini
 (Naïve OP 30493)

This is the first of the known operas of Vivaldi; it dates from 1713. Besides all his concertos he also composed many operas, 94 according to his reckoning, and if this is true then only 25% of them have survived.

The title, Ottone in villa, would seem to say "Ottone in town", but apparently it means the opposite; Ottone is on vacation in his country-house, out of town. Ottone is the emperor known as Otho (in Latin), who usurped the throne of Rome in the year 69; he lasted only eight weeks in power, and then committed suicide. He was one of the short-reigning rulers after Nero was deposed and dispatched (Nero took his own life but needed assistance to finish him off). The action takes place in a single day (that was the way it had to be done in the theatre of the olden days); of course, the time is further reduced to a few hours in the performance. Otho was also a character in Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (1642) in which Nero (Nerone) was the dominating protagonist. But in the source for the libretto of Vivaldi's opera, the emperor was Claudius (as in "I Claudius" of Robert Graves).

Ottone in villa is a comedy of errors (people lusting after the wrong persons) and disguises (not to say transvestism) with a role for a soprano castrato (Caio), and a female soprano (Tullia, pursuing Caio amorously while pretending to be a man named Ostilio), and a female contralto portraying the emperor Otho (here in the Italian form Ottone). Murder (private crime of passion against Cleonilla) and execution (imperial and official) are in the pipeline, till all is resolved and Tullia and Caio are wedded at the end of a frantic day (similar to the Marriage of Figaro, actually).