17 Oct Live recording of Jordi Savall’s Juditha triumphans
Hugo Romano records, in collaboration with Manuel Mohino, the live performance in Barcelona of Jordi Savall’s Juditha triumphans, composed by Antonio Vivaldi, for Catalunya Música.
Juditha triumphans, composed to celebrate the victory of the Republic of Venice over the Turks during the Siege of Corfu (resulting from the defeat of the Ottoman Army by Austrian troops in the Battle of Petrovaradin on 5 August 1716), represents the peak of Antonio Vivaldi’s vocal music oeuvre. This Sacrum militare oratorium is based on the Book of Judith, with a libretto in Latin written by Iacopo Cassetti at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, where the work was created and performed in autumn 1716. All the characters, including the choir, were performed by female voices: Judith and her handmaid Abra, Holofernes and his eunuch Vagaus, as well as Ozias, the High Priest of Bethulia. Juditha triumphans, the only one of Vivaldi’s four oratorios to have survived to this day, is striking for the extraordinary beauty of its arias and the intense choral interventions, the drama of the recitatives and the surprising variety of timbre combinations from the orchestral ensemble (in addition to the usual strings there are 5 violas da gamba, the viola d’amore, 4 theorbos, a mandolin, piccolo, chalumeaux, oboes, trumpets, clarini and timpani).
More info here