#Vivaldi#Giustino#SentoSeno
Ensemble: Matheus
Countertenor: Philippe Jaroussky
First performed in Rome in 1724, Il Giustino is among the most beautiful and cogent of Vivaldi’s operas. Using a libretto by Niccolò Beregan that was also set by Albinoni and Handel, it deals, loosely and somewhat fancifully, with the rise to power of the sixth-century Byzantine emperor Justin I, who began life as a ploughman before embarking on the successful military career that brought him to the attention of the imperial authorities. Like many Baroque operas, the work is structured after the fashion of a Renaissance epic, in which the erotic and the political repeatedly intersect and supernatural powers govern the lives of men.
Watched over by the goddess Fortuna, the heroic Giustino saves the life of the emperor Anastasio’s sister Leocasta when she is attacked by a bear, and is subsequently sent to Constantinople, where he becomes the protagonist of a series of interlocking narratives that expose the empire as being threatened both from without (by the tyrannical Vitaliano, who is obsessively in love with Anastasio’s wife Arianna) and within (Anastastio’s duplicitous general Amanzio, who wants the imperial throne for himself). Though intricate, the complex web of plots and counterplots is carefully laid out and resolved, with none of the prolixity that hampers some of Vivaldi’s operas.
Aria:
Sento in seno che in pioggia di lagrime
In pioggia di lagrime
Si dile...egua
Si dilegua l’amante mio cor
Sento in seno che in pioggia di lagrime
Sento in seno che in pioggia di lagrime
Si dile...egua l’amante mio cor
Si dilegua l’amante mio cor
Ma mio core tralascia di piangere
Tralascia di piangere
Che il tuo pianto non scema il dolor
Non scema il dolor
Se...ento
Sento in seno che in pioggia di lagrime
In pioggia di lagrime
Si dile...egua
Si dilegua l’amante mio cor
Sento in seno che in pioggia di lagrime
Sento in seno che in pioggia di lagrime
Si dile...egua l’amante mio cor
Si dilegua l’amante mio cor
Painting: Columbus Avenue, Rainy Day by Childe Hassam (1885).
