An Evening of Vivaldi for All Seasons

Anyone with even a passing interest in Baroque music will be familiar with the notion that Vivaldi wrote the same formulaic concerto hundreds of times, will likely be sick to death of “The Four Seasons” by now and may harbor the idea that a Vivaldi opera (21 of them survive) is something that only a specialist could endure.

But tell that to the 3,000 or so ecstatic fans of Cecilia Bartoli who braved rain-slicked freeways and steep ticket prices to fill Segerstrom Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center Monday for an all-Vivaldi night sung by the popular mezzo-soprano and played by the entrancing Milanese early music group Il Giardino Armonico. The concert was a very long one, with four encores (during which one Handel aria was sneaked in), that lasted nearly three hours. And who knows how long people stood in line afterward, clutching their copies of Bartoli’s Vivaldi CD (just repackaged as a cute mini-book and the winner last week of a Grammy) to be signed by the singer?

Something very curious has happened. Two of the most entertaining and exhilarating concerts of the season--of any season--have been Vivaldi-driven. The first was Gidon Kremer’s libidinous performance of “The Four Seasons” (Vivaldi’s and Astor Piazzolla’s intertwined) with his Kremerata Baltica at the Music Center in the fall. The second was Bartoli’s recital--an evening of stirring, staggering singing and playing without equal.

The mezzo’s generous program and encores included arias from eight of Vivaldi’s operas, a brief excerpt from his “Gloria,” as well as two concertos and an opera sinfonia played by the ensemble. And yes, even here, there were plenty of Vivaldi formulas on display.

Often poetically tied to the elements, the music tends to vacillate between stormy weather and languid sunshine. Vivaldi liked his rhythmic grooves as much as a modern-day Minimalist. He was a harmonic trickster, always ready to pull a surprise modulation out of his pocket. And, good Italian that he was, he drenched his music in engaging melody. Relying on short, standard instrumental forms, he never approached the structural profundity of Bach. His operas could not come close to Handel’s in characterization.

Yet if Vivaldi is unimpressive on the page, he did not write for the page, he wrote for performers. And with the likes of Bartoli or Giovanni Antonini, the ensemble’s director and brilliant recorder player, the music functioned something like a jazz chart. It is a place to begin, but it is what the performer makes of it that matters.

What Bartoli makes of it is astonishing. She gets into the music with the intensity of a jazz singer--even as she absorbs and moves to the instrumental introductions to the arias--yet she has one of the most highly trained voices of all time. It is hard to say which is more thrilling, her tossing out the most elaborate coloratura passages with phenomenal velocity or her slow, quiet singing that stills all movement.

These arias are from such little-known operas as “Bajazet,” “L’Olimpiade,” “Il Guistino,” “Juditha Triumphans,” “Griselda,” “Ercole sul Termondonte,” “Farnace” and “Ottone in Villa.” All of them focused on one or another aspect of love--longing, lust, bewitchment and jealous fury--and Bartoli was remarkable at capturing the raw affect of emotion. When she sings, she is not so much a character as she is the personification and distillation of ferocity, wonderment or enchantment. You never need the text of the libretto in front of you; every muscle in her body seems centered on the precise feeling she expresses.

But she can’t do it alone. Il Giardino Armonico is the Duke Ellington band of period-instrument groups. Every player in this stylishly dressed ensemble sounds like an individual yet is able to work toward a virtuoso unified end. Antonini is a flamboyant leader who stamps his feet, shakes his mop of hair and seems to release expression out of his players as if he were twisting open a valve. He was the wild soloist in the Concerto in C major for flautino recorder, strings and basso continuo, RV 443, and he played his tiny instrument so excitedly, so extravagantly and with such a sense of improvisation that the result sounded almost like Baroque bebop.

Unfortunately, the Bartoli/Giardino Armonico tour is a very limited one, with just three appearances in America. But at least a DVD from a Paris performance will soon be released. As enjoyable as is their CD, it is the physical presence of these spectacular artists that magically brings Vivaldi to life.