Il matrimonio segreto is the only opera that has ever had the honor of being repeated in full at its premiere, so very much did the comical musical goings-on please its distinguished audience. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Innsbruck Early Music Festival Weeks, the conductor Alessandro De Marchi again at long last led a performance of Cimarosa’s most popular opera in historical performance practice and in original sound.

Vivaldi may be best remembered for his virtuosic concertos but, as anyone familiar with his famous D major Gloria will know, he also had a real ear for vocal sonorities. His only surviving oratorio, Juditha Triumphans, has until recently been a well-kept secret. The biblical story of Judith overcoming Holofernes and his army (beheading him herself–no shrinking violet she) was popular with both librettists and composers, offering plenty of opportunities for exuberant tub-thumping. And these Vivaldi seizes eagerly, the opening rabble-rousing chorus (here preceded by a sinfonia reconstructed by Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot) setting the tone in truly martial fashion.

Orlando finto pazzo ('Orlando feigns madness') was the second of Vivaldi's numerous operas, and his first for the Venetian stage. The story of Orlando's madness is taken not from the usual source, Ariosto's poem Orlando furioso, but Boiardo's earlier Orlando innamorato, a similarly tragicomic mix of love, intrigue and magic. In Ariosto's poem Orlando's madness is real, but here he pretends it for no obvious reason; in fact it's no more than a couple of episodes in a convoluted and unengaging plot built around a lovepentangle (no less), and further complicated by various disguises and rampant dissembling.

Fireworks, virtuosity and bravura pieces are essential ingredients of Vivaldi’s concerto oeuvre. Discover or rediscover Vivaldi’s concertos played by the most prestigious artists.

“Carmelite Vespers 1709” presents a reconstruction of musical performances in Rome in 1709, based on a new critical edition by Italian Handel expert Angela Romagnoli. In early 18th century-Rome the holiday of Madonna del Carmine was celebrated with a lavish musical pasticcio. Italian Early Music specialist Alessandro de Marchi, his Academia Montis Regalis and an excellent ensemble of solo vocalists present the reconstruction of such a service as it might have been performed in 1709 under the direction of Venetian master Antonio Caldara (1670–1736).

The first complete and unabridged recording of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s operatic masterpiece, as well as the world-premiere recording on period instruments, undertaken by the critically acclaimed 2010 production from the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, known as the “Bayreuth of Baroque Opera”. In his all too brief career Pergolesi, who died in 1736 aged only 26, set the course for 18th century opera. His works, especially L’Olimpiade, which was first performed in 1735, introduced a new and sentimental tone to the opera stage. Based on one of the most popular subject matters of opera seria, Pergolesi’s masterpiece L’Olimpiade offers a drama of love and intrigue coupled with highly virtuoso singing. Presenting Italian conductor Alessandro de Marchi, one of the most sought-after Early Music specialists, and a stunning cast of top-league international Baroque singers.

Giuseppe Cambini has had a bad press for almost two centuries: Mozart told tales of his jealousy and intrigue, and the sheer size of his output – at least 600 instrumental works, a dozen operas, and more – has prompted further suspicion (there is nothing worse than being facile). He composed almost as many string quintets as Boccherini (with whom he played as a young man) and even more quartets, and he wrote nearly 100 works in the fashionable Parisian form of the time, the symphonie concertante.

Giuseppe Giordani was an important Italian composer best known for his operas, oratorios, and sacred music. Among his greatest successes was his 1787 oratorio La distruzione di Gerusalemme, believed to be the first sacred drama presented in a theater. It drew enthusiastic praise from the local press and positive commentary from such notables as Goethe, who was present at the Naples premiere. Giordani was born into a well-to-do family in Naples on December 19, 1751. He exhibited musical talent early on and enrolled at the Santa Maria di Loreto Conservatory in Naples, where he studied under Antonio Sacchini, Fedele Fenaroli, and Gennaro Manna. The loss of his father in 1770 – when Giuseppe was 18 – apparently did not derail his education, for he would secure an important post, that of secondary maestro di cappella at the Tesoro di San Gennaro, in Naples, in 1774.