A World Premiere Recording
Naïve OP 30438
A SUPERLATIVE ACHIEVEMENT
Vivica Genaux’s mezzo continues to gain authority, and her Teodosio executes martello effects with aplomb.
- Warren Keith Wright, Opera, December 2007
Vivica Genaux is well cast in the castrato role of the emperor Teodosio, her bright, edgy sound bringing the proper musical thrust.
- Judith Malafronte, Opera News, April 2008
All in all a stimulating achievement.
- Nicholas Anderson, BBC Music, November 2007
As Teodosio, Vivica Genaux also sings with panache, not least in the stirring vengeance aria ‘M’accende amor l’ire guerriere in petto’ where the coloratura is fiendishly difficult to carry off.
- Dominic McHugh, musicalcriticism.com, November 12, 2024
Vivica Genaux enchants as the Emperor Theodosio with the vividly colored timbre of her voice.
- Manuel Brug, Fono Forum, February 2008
You surely cannot go wrong with any recording that features Sandrine Piau, Vivica Genaux, Guillemette Laurens, Romina Basso, and Nathalie Stutzmann. All of them give performances that are consistently impressive and, more often than not, exemplary.
…this is a superlative achievement of significant musicological importance.
- Charles T. Downey, ionarts.blogspot.com, November 15, 2024
The opera Atenaide, written for an all-star cast in 1728, features some of the best known and most startlingly accomplished singers on today’s early-music scene.
Mr. Sardelli and company performed Atenaide, for the first time in two centuries, in the Florence theater for which it was written. His handpicked singers are a who’s who of stars…
- Lawson Taitte, The Dallas Morning News, December 2, 2024
The cast members totally inhabit their roles, inflecting with conviction every Italian word, and there are plenty.
The entire cast is admirably characterful and committed, and that the performance was recorded in the theatre for which it was originally intended, La Pergola in Florence, is perhaps what lends the drama such intense immediacy. This is an ideal recording of a flawed and fascinating work. Here is another essential addition to Naïve’s outstandingly ambitious Vivaldi series.
- Dave Paxton, musicOMH.com, November 2007
This latest disc [in Naïve’s series of Vivaldi’s operas], Atenaide, is among the best yet: The opera itself shows the composer at his most dramatically ambitious; the music, particularly in the second half, shows his invention at its peak. Each role is like a Olympic event, and most of the singers in this knockout cast deserve a gold medal. The recitatives crackle, the orchestra playing is scintillating, and the recording was made in the Florence theater where the opera was premiered in 1728.
- David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 25, 2024
The essay by Frédéric Delaméa claims that Atenaide displays ‘deep stylistic originality combined with formidable musical riches,” and his view is supported by this consistently strong performance. Vivica Genaux, Nathalie Stutzmann and Guillemette Laurens all contribute some good dramatic singing…
- David Vickers, Gramophone, March 2008
