Gelido in ogni vena

Conductor Federico Maria Sardelli
Director Marco Gandini
Opera di Firenze - Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Farnace - Mary-Ellen Nesi
Berenice - Delphine Galou
Tamiri - Sonia Prina
Selinda - Loriano Castellano
Pompeo - Emanuele d'Aguanno
Gilade - Roberta Mameli
Aquilio - Magnus Staveland

World premiere recording on DVD availaible also on Bluray and CD. Worldwide distribution by Naxos.

The 1738 version of Il Farnace has never been performed and recorded in scenic form before. This is one of Vivaldi's best operas and in this version it has only two acts because the third one has been lost. Federico Maria Sardelli, one of the greatest Vivaldi's specialists is firmly against reconstruction of missing parts and has preferred here to leave things as they are. At the end of the second act he just added the beautiful aria "Gelido in ogni vena" from 1727 version, maybe Vivaldi's finest aria ever.

Il Farnace is the most re-written and re-proposed of Vivaldi’s operas, it’s like a beloved child who worries his father, and to whom the parent always wants to give the best. Versions of Farnace, two in 1727 and one each in 1730, 1731 and 1732, had been conceived and adapted to the different circumstances for Venice, Prague, Pavia and Mantua, always with a cast to Vivaldi’s satisfaction and with the composer in control of the production. The greatest appreciation of Vivaldi’s operatic music was expressed in a letter by a spectator of the 1727 Carnival season, the abbot Antonio Conti. He wrote to Madame de Caylus that of all the operas of the Venice season he liked best Farnace because its music was very varied, “between the sublime and the tender”, and because Vivaldi’s pupil worked wonders.