A famous recording of this Vivaldi rarity. Last copy in stock
Vivaldi wrote juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie, the second of his three oratorios, in 1716: a moral tale, of a sort, for the girls of the Pieta orphanage where he was violin teacher and choirmaster, extolling feminine virtue and valour. The story, from the Apocrypha, tells of Judith, the noble Jewish widow, who saves her people by going forth from the besieged Bethulia to the Assyrian camp, charming the general, Holofernes, and beheading him while he sleeps in a drunken stupor. This was a favourite plot; Alessandro Scarlatti set it twice, and Metastasio later wrote a text on it, set by the young Mozart among others. In 1716 Venice was at war with the Turks, and Giacomo Cassetti's libretto was intended to have allegorical significance. The work is like an opera in plan— a series of da capo arias linked by narrative recitative, with a small number of choruses and accompanied recitatives at high points in the drama.
More than any other Italian of his time, Vivaldi was a highly individual composer: the arias here are as distinctive as any piece of passage-work from a violin concerto. He lacked the melodic grace of many Italians of Alessandro Scarlatti's generation and the next; but his music, composed with the ample resources of the Pieta in mind, makes up in colour what it lacks in lyrical warmth. Most of the arias here use just strings and continuo, or continuo alone; but variety is procured by some relatively exotic instrumentation. One aria has a viola d'amore obbligato; one has four theorboes; one uses a "Con[ver]to de Viole all'Inglese" (presumably viols—it would seem that violins are used here); one has a mandolin solo; one has solo parts for oboe and organ; and one uses the "salmoe", an instrument not certainly identified—possibly a form of schalmei or chalumeau (a clarinet is used here, and sounds well ; the aria text refers to a turtle-dove, and the clarinet coos plausibly enough). The music starts a shade unpromisingly, for the first arias contain some fairly routine invention, but it grows stronger as the drama draws to its climax and the interchanges between Judith and Holofernes in particular include some fine pieces: there is Judith's song with mandolin, followed by a beautiful love-song from Holofernes with oboe and organ, and then Judith has two prayers, one with only the upper strings, then (with two other arias between) a powerful D minor one with 'viols'. Much of the music is in minor keys, where Vivaldi's invention was always more striking. The arias for the servants, in the Venetian tradition, are lighter than those for the principals. - Gramophone 1975
