This recording of Vivaldi’s opera Farnace is the first complete recording, including all the arias and choruses from the 1731 version, as well as restoring Tamiri’s recitativo accompagnato from the 1738 version. For historical and conceptual reasons, each of the three acts is preceded by different examples from Corselli’s version of the opera, which was presented in Madrid in 1738. The entire version is built around a selection of the best interpretations from the last two performances recorded live at Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, on 26 and 28 October, 2001. It should therefore be pointed out that any differences of sound or mood which may occasionally seem to affect the singing, or give the impression of the singers being further away, are due to the singers’ position on the stage. Any small inconvenience arising from the recording of a live stage performance is amply compensated for by the great spontaneity of the Recitatives and the sincerity of feeling in the Arias, in which the singers truly improvise some ornamentations in the da capo sections of the Arias in question.

An opera is always an all-round spectacle, in which text, declamation, music, song, dance and theatre enter into a dialogue and are united in their one common objective: to invite us to dream by drawing us into a Utopian world, one which is always full of magic, beauty and emotion.

Jordi Savall, Madrid, October 2001