Antonio Vivaldi’s La Dorilla RV 709, a heroic-pastoral opera on a libretto by Antonio Maria Lucchini, was premiered at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice on 6 November 1726. Six years later it was revived in a much shortened and altered form at the Sporck theatre in Prague. In 1734 it returned for the last time to the Venetian stage at the Teatro Sant’Angelo, where, despite being greatly revised, it was once again successful.

Many of its recitatives had been shortened and several arias replaced, some with movements borrowed from other operas by Vivaldi and some with arias taken from ones by other composers, such as Johann Adolf Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli, Domenico Sarro and Leonardo Leo. The adaptation was the work of the Venetian man of letters Bartolomeo Vitturi, who adjusted the libretto with the precise aim of satisfying the demands of the public, which wished to hear the most famous pieces by the composers who were fashionable in those years.

The present critical edition, based on the partly autograph manuscript preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin (Foà 39), besides providing an opportunity to reconstruct the successive stages in which this opera-pasticcio became restyled, adds an important element to the rediscovery of the Red Priest’s stage works and sheds new light on his compositional practice.



Antonio Vivaldi, La Dorilla RV 709
Dramma eroico pastorale in three acts
Casa Ricordi (Milano) with collaboration of Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi)
Critical edition by Ivano Bettin
PR 1454 - Two-volume set, critical commentary included

Image: Manuscript, c. 142r. Sinfonia (first page) of «La Dorilla» by Antonio Vivaldi
© Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino. Foà 39.