Continuing his captivating survey of the Baroque serenata, Fabio Bonizzoni now focuses on one of the “occasional” works – with music at a magnificently-high level throughout – written by Antonio Vivaldi when in Venice: 'La Senna festeggiante'.

What animated Vivaldi to compose a work apparently extolling the virtues of the River Seine in Paris? The story goes, as described by Michael Talbot in his exemplary accompanying essay, that the serenata was written in 1726 jointly to honour the French king, Louis XV (on his name day), Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (then the Protector of the Affairs of France at the Vatican) and the French Ambassador in Venice, the Comte de Gergy; and bringing in the river to heap Baroque praise on the Sun King’s great-grandson.

An unmistakeably Vivaldian score (complete with self-borrowings and “loans” from others), the composer nonetheless makes plentiful musical allusions to his Gallic theme and setting through the music of the three named vocalists – The Golden Age, Virtue and the Seine – and through the instrumental accompaniment, handled deftly and gloriously here by Bonizzoni and La Risonanza. The singers, Yetzabel Arias Fernández, Martín Oro and Sergio Foresti, capture the spirit of the allegorical and fluvial characters superbly in this new Glossa recording, which was made at the Abbaye de Saint-Michel en Thiérache (also the setting for La Risonanza’s earlier recording of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Serenate a Filli).