Argippo is an opera libretto by Domenico Lalli, which in Giovanni Porta's setting premiered in Venice in 1717. Claudio Nicola Stampa's reworked version of the libretto was set as L'Argippo by Andrea Stefano Fiorè. This opera was performed in Milan in 1722. Antonio Vivaldi's Argippo, RV 697, based on Stampa's version of the libretto, was staged in two different versions in 1730, first in Vienna (RV 697-A), and later in Prague (RV 697-B). The music of both of these versions was lost. Until a Czech Composer named Ondřej Macek rediscovered it. The Opera was then performed in 2008 for the first time since the first half of the 18th century. Vivaldi's setting of the Argippo libretto partially survives in a pasticcio, RV Anh. 137, which, in the 21st century, was the basis for a reconstruction of the Prague version of Vivaldi's opera.

Libretto

Domenico Lalli's Il gran Mogol libretto was set by Francesco Mancini, and performed in the Teatro San Bartolomeo, Naples, in December 1713. In the next two decades this libretto was set as Argippo by several composers:

Roles

Synopsis

The opera, in three acts, is set in an Indian royal court and centers around a young princess smitten by a dishonest suitor.

1717–1722

Porta's setting of Lalli's Argippo libretto was first performed in Venice in 1717. Fiorè's setting of Stampa's adaptation of the Argippo libretto was first performed in Milan in 1722.

Porta

Porta's Argippo was first performed on 31 October 1717 in Venice, in the Teatro San Cassiano. Both the printed libretto (titled L'Argippo: Drama per musica) and the manuscript score (titled Argippo) of this performance survive. A four-page dedication by Lalli precedes the text of his libretto. There is no sinfonia (overture) in the score. There are fifteen scenes in the first act, fourteen in the second act, and nine in the last act. The text in the score closely follows the original libretto. The printed libretto contains text variants for nine arias, but it is not known whether these alternative texts were set by Porta. In 1722, Porta's opera was re-staged in Venice, this time in the Teatro San Moisè. Also for this production, Lalli wrote a dedication in the printed libretto.

Fiorè

L'Argippo was staged in the Regio Ducal Teatro in Milan in honour of the 31st birthday of Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Holy Roman Empress, which fell on 28 August 1722. The dedication, dated 27 August 1722 in the extant libretto, was written by Giuseppe Ferdinando Brivio and addressed at Girolamo di Colloredo-Waldsee, who was the then-time Austrian governor of the Duchy of Milan. Stampa added an introduction to this revised version of Lalli's libretto, which was set by Fiorè. The libretto describes three stage settings for the fourteen scenes of the first act, while the second act (twelve scenes) and the third act (eleven scenes) each have two different stage settings. A reprint of the libretto was published in 2018.

Vivaldi's RV 697, pasticcios and a reconstruction

In a letter he wrote in 1737, Vivaldi mentions he had been called to Vienna: according to Michael Talbot, this was likely on invitation by the Theater am Kärntnertor where the first version of his Argippo, RV 697, was presented as an intermezzo in 1730. Later that year, a somewhat more extended version of this opera was performed by a company of mostly Italian performers in Franz Anton von Sporck's private theatre in Prague. A few years later, this Italian ensemble performed in Regensburg, where a score with at least six arias from Vivaldi's Argippo was recovered.

1730

Two closely related German versions of the Argippo libretto were published in 1730: Both contain an aria titled "Gelido in ogni vena", on a text extracted from Metastasio's Siroe, re di Persia libretto, and which Vivaldi had for instance also inserted in his Farnace opera, there based on music from his L'Inverno concerto. The libretto variants were based on Stampa's adaptation of Lalli's text, but were transmitted without their respective settings. Only the Prague libretto names Vivaldi as composer: because of the similarities between both texts Vivaldi is however considered the composer in both cases. The Vienna version, which was probably performed before the Prague version, received the RV 697-A number, and RV 697-B was assigned to the opera performed in the Sporck Theater.

Pasticcios

RV Anh. 137 is an Argippo pasticcio that survives in two manuscripts: This pasticcio contains at least six arias by Vivaldi. Another Argippo pasticcio was performed in Brno in 1733. The libretto of this production survives without music: as a pasticcio it may have contained arias by Vivaldi.

Recovering Argippo music

In 2008 Ondřej Macek presented his reconstruction of Vivaldi's Argippo, which he had based on extant librettos, on the Vivaldi arias in the Regensburg pasticcio score—which he had recovered two years earlier—, and on other music the Venetian composer had written around 1730. Macek performed this opera with the Hofmusici Baroque Ensemble, first in Prague, and later in Venice. A live recording of the Venice performance, which with inclusion of sinfonias derived from Vivaldi concertos lasts around two hours, was issued on CD in 2009. Argippo Resurrected is a 2009 Czech documentary about Macek's recovery, reconstruction and performance of Vivaldi's Argippo music. The full version of the RV Anh. 137 pasticcio was recovered in Darmstadt, where it had previously been classified under an erroneous title, and misattributed to Ernst Christian Hesse. A digitized facsimile of this score was made available on the website of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt.