The title The Return of the Angels on this Canadian release indicates it is a sequel to the award-winning Vivaldi's Angels, released in 2009 by the same forces. The "angels" are the female choristers and instrumentalists of the Ospedale della Pietà, the institution that employed Vivaldi for most of his life. Often (as here) described as an orphanage, the Ospedale was likely a place for well-off Venetians to stash their illegitimate children. Travelers, including Rousseau, came from far and wide to hear the Ospedale performances, with the girls sequestered behind a screen. This all has been known for some time, but few performers have taken the step of asking what it means musically for Vivaldi's choral scores, many of which would have been sung exclusively by women. That's what you get from Ensemble Caprice and director Matthias Maute, both on Vivaldi's Angels and this album. If you want only one, Vivaldi's Angels may be a better bet, for the the famed Gloria, RV 589, on that album, radically remade by the transposition of the tenor and bass parts an octave upward, is a real revelation. The music here seems mostly to have been written with the voice ranges of young women in mind, and the soloists, while competent, do not include the superb Monika Mauch this time around. That said, this is a very enjoyable release. The opening act is a set of excerpts from the oratorio Juditha triumphans, RV 644, based on the biblical story of Judith slicing off the head of Holofernes and intended to whip up support for the Republic of Venice's ongoing war against the Ottoman Turks. The contrast between the ethereal choral sound and the music's militaristic themes would have been startling in Vivaldi's time and remains so in our own. The collection of short Vivaldi choral pieces (and short excerpts from a Zelenka oratorio for contrast) that rounds out the program, including a section of the "other" Gloria, RV 588, is smoothly sung by Ensemble Caprice, although with eight singers it is a good deal smaller than the group of 40 travelers reported hearing. The two instrumental concertos, afflicted by jittery rhythms, are less successful. There is no requirement that Vivaldi's choral works be performed as they are on this album: he was writing for publication as well as for the young women of the Ospedale, and it's hard to say exactly what choral sound he had in mind. But these performances certainly make major contributions to the understanding of Vivaldi's sound world.
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