Indeed, it would not be long before Venetian theaters would be “colonized” by the diaspora of Neapolitan composers who headed north. What makes Vivaldi’s Teuzzone so distinctive is his attempt – which was so happily successful – to offer audiences in Mantua a compendium of the entire first phase of his career as a composer of operas, on the eve of epochal change in the history of Italian opera in the first half of the eighteenth century. Often, music by other composers would be incorporated among some of his best and best-loved arias. Seeking to impress his new boss, Vivaldi debuted with a “pasticcio”, which is to say, a work combining music of his own as well as others’, which he would rework.

In 1719 he had only recently left Venice and its theaters, having accepted a high-profile job at the court of Prince Filippo D’Assia in Mantua. Il Teuzzone is a perfect example of the kind of musical work that Vivaldi had developed by the end of the second decade of the eighteenth century.

Where does this work fit in among Vivaldi’s long list of compositions? Reinhard Strohm has called Teuzzone « the crown jewel of the so-called Arcadian Reform of serious Italian opera».

We had a chance to talk about the new critical edition with the curators, Alessandro Borin and Antonio Moccia, who explained some of the peculiarities of this opera, including editorial curiosities and a few anecdotes. The series The Dramatic Music of Antonio Vivaldi, published by Casa Ricordi in collaboration with the Antonio Vivaldi Italian Institute of the Giorgio Cini Foundation of Venice, and directed by Reinhard Strohm and Alessandro Borin, has added yet another work to its collection: Il Teuzzone (RV 736).

Vivaldi a prince in venice