L'Olimpiade

Description

More than 60 composers set Metastasio's libretto to music: from Caldara to Vivaldi and Hasse, from Leo to Scarlatti and Piccinni, from Paisiello to Cherubini, up to Pergolesi, who for the 1735 carnival presented his Olimpiade at the Roman Tordinona theatre: the last opera seria by a composer barely twenty-five years old who was to die the following year. Many consider his version the most inspired, characterized by a musical originality as ingenious as it is refined, by a joyful freshness. After the rediscovery of the unpublished Mass in D major, Giulio Prandi and his Ghislieri return to Pergolesi with the recording of his lyrical masterpiece, captured in the 18th-century theatre of Jesi, the composer's hometown, at the initiative of the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini, which for years has been promoting his work.