Renato Dolcini; Sonia Prina; Loriana Castellano; Raffaele Pe; Lucia Cirillo; Valeria La Grotta; Giovanni Imbroglia; Marco Mantovani; Alberto Busettini; Nicola Lamon; Francesco Ferrarini; Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice di Venezia; Fabio Ceresa; Federico Maria Sardelli - Antonio Vivaldi: Il Bajazet

Bajazet was a work of Vivaldi's late maturity, a dramatic tale that recounts the capture of the Turkish sultan Bajazet by the all-conquering Tartar, Tamerlane. It is a pasticcio, a well-established form, in which Vivaldi incorporated arias by some of the greatest young composers of his time - Johann Adolf Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli and Riccardo Broschi, brother to the famous castrato Farinelli - to form a generous buffet of musical fireworks. Still, Vivaldi's recitatives, choruses and arias form the backbone of the opera, and constitute the majority of the music, producing a work of kaleidoscopic invention.