The Vivaldi Album is a series of operatic aria anthologies subdivided by vocal register, drawn from Antonio Vivaldi’s surviving musical works for theatre. Its sources include twenty-four musical dramas, three serenades and numerous individual arias. Each volume is made up of twelve pieces which vary in terms of affect and character, illustrating a wide range of styles and dramatic situations. They are arranged in chronological order so as to provide an optimal cross-section of Vivaldi’s entire career. The twelve arias included in each volume, drawn from an equal num-ber of operas, covering a chronological span lasting about a quarter of a century: from his beginnings in Vicenza (1713) to his more mature works performed at the end of the 1730s. In addition to their variety and great intrinsic musical value, the titles brought together in this volume were chosen because they represent an ideal cross-section of Vivaldi’s entire dramatic production. In fact, there are some works dating from the early phases of his career, linked, above all, to his collaboration with the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice, while several works date from his middle period, the fruits of a series of commissions received from some of the most important Italian courts of the era (Mantua, Florence, Milan and Rome). Finally, other works are drawn from the culminating phase of his career, when the arrival of Neapolitan musicians in the north of the peninsula, especially Venice, forced him to extend his professional activities to the surrounding Venetian mainland.

Only a few of the arias in this anthology have come down to us in a complete, or close to complete form. In fact, most of them are characterised by their more or less unfinished state, or have only survived in sketch form, as remnants of largely lost works or, in some cases, as part of projects that were planned but never realised.