I can’t really explain why this concert didn’t really float our boat – it just didn’t. Janie and I were both feeling unusually tired that early evening – both short of energy for venturing out. We had been enjoying following the cricket and tennis over the weekend, the latter until reasonably late I suppose, but that wouldn’t normally put us off.
La Serenissima is an unusually large troupe for the Wigmore Hall – there as a lot of juggling and jiggling to fit everyone on the stage, so it all felt a bit busy.
The chorus missed their cue to enter right at the start of the performance, which led to more jiggling for stage space after the orchestra had prepared themselves spatially and tuned their instruments.
The concert was all music from the Imperial Court of Charles VI
I wanted to hear Caldara live as I had never heard any before. I rather liked his arias, actually. Quite beautiful.
I was amused that the first set was from Ormisda, re di Persia, singing praise to the God Mithras, about whom I myself lauded a few months ago following a Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum:
But I knew the Conti comic opera material would not please Janie – nor did it much please me. In truth, the whole concert was a bit busy and noisy for us that night.
Come the interval, when we realised that the only substantially different piece on the schedule was a Vivaldi concerto, lovely though the RV171 undoubtedly is, we decided to make an early exit. Here is Europa Gallant’s delightful recording, with Fabio Biondi on the fiddle:
The following is La Serenissima playing Caldara, but a sinfonia, not an aria – beautiful it is, though:
…and finally here is a Caldara aria, performed by Concerto Köln under Emmanuelle Haïm with the superb Philippe Jaroussky singing the aria.
