Music

A scene from the premiere at Prague's Ledebour Garden

As reported in this week’s Night and Day, the Prague Baroque Festival is staging a number of rarely-performed and never-performed works as part of its summer-long program.

Among them is Antonio Vivaldi’s L’Unione della Pace, e di Marte (Union of Peace with Mars). Performed just once at a celebration hosted by Louis XV after the birth of his twin daughters in 1727, this work is a particular type of shorter opera in the Italian baroque style.

Known as serenata, these pieces – usually based on allegoric or mythological themes – were written and performed for the special occasions of royal and aristocratic families of the day. Although Vivaldi wrote eight of these works, music for only three of them survives.

The original print of the libretto – that’s the lyrics, to you and me – for Union of Peace with Mars is stored in a library in Milan, but the original music has not survived, as was the case with another four of the eight serenata Vivaldi is believed to have composed.

Study of the text has led to the theory that Vivaldi, who may not have been given much notice of these special occasions, simply inserted arias from operas – in this case Orlando and Farnace – he was working on at the time.

This has led to the version now being performed in Prague by conductor and harpsichordist Ondřej Macek with his baroque ensemble Hof-Musici.

But it’s not the first time 39-year-old Praguer Macek – whose day job is teaching chamber performance at the Academy of Music in Brno’s Masaryk University – has performed a rediscovered work by the famous composer.

In 2008 Macek attracted the attention of the cultural world after he reconstructed a significant part of Argippo, an opera Vivaldi wrote for Prague which was believed to have been lost forever. He performed the work at Prague Castle and Český Krumlov before taking it to Venice where it was committed to disc.

Before that too, in 2000, Macek and Hof-Musici performed the Orlando finto pazzo opera, which is believed to be the last preserved opera by Vivaldi that had not until then been performed on a contemporary stage.

The Velvet Violin is not sure what to make of all these re-interpretations. Harmless fun, useful academic exercise, waste of time, denial of the composer’s wishes, or none of the above? Readers can make up their own minds.

L’Unione della Pace, e di Marte

Where: Ledebour Garden (above), Lichtenstein Palace, Malostranské náměsti 13, Prague 1 (map)

When: July 19-24, August 7-21, 8 p.m.

Tickets: 350 – 750 Kč