Carolyn Sampson, Concerto de’ Cavalieri, Marcello Di Lisa

When Faustina Bordoni took to the stage, the audience could hardly contain themselves. She was in fact considered the most important opera diva of the first half of the 18th century. Her repertoire enclosed over 100 roles, expressly written for her by the major composers of the time, like Georg Friedrich Händel, Domenico Sarro and Johann Adolf Hasse, to whom she was also married.

Travelling in a sort of Grand Tour through some of the greatest cultural cities of the Baroque era, this programme wants to invite the audience to follow the main footsteps of the career of Faustina Bordoni, revived by the extraordinary voice of Carolyn Sampson.

The first stop is Venice, where Bordoni was born and where, according to relevant musicological studies, she sang the passionate cantata for soprano and instruments Che giova il sospirar, povero core RV 679 as part of a private home concert, probably in the presence of Vivaldi himself.

The second station is in Naples, with the arias Tortora che il suo bene and Per abbattere il mio core from Domenico Sarro’s opera Partenope, in which Faustina starred in the role of Rosmira: they are two pieces extremely different from each other, the one intense and struggling, the other – accompanied by the trumpet – furious and virtuoso, but both enriched by an enormous wealth of colors and nuances.

Then we move to London, to listen the two arias Lusinghe più care and Brilla nell’alma – both demanding great virtuosity and technical perfection – from Händel’s opera Alessandro, in which Faustina Bordoni challenged her bitter rival Francesca Cuzzoni, another great primadonna of that time.

The fourth and final stop of this journey into the diva’s operatic life is in Dresden, where Faustina sang the title role’s aria Son qual misera colomba from the opera La Cleofide by her husband Johann Adolph Hasse, that is – still today – one of the milestones of the Baroque opera repertoire.

Following the path of the journey, the programme is also simmetrically interspersed with instrumental pieces by Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti and Händel, three composers who were able to adapt the forms of the musical tradition of their time and to incorporate them into a scintillating new style, which was then considered revolutionary. The featured works in fact show the most daring experimentation and an absolutely modern instrumental virtuosity.