Antonio Vivaldi Serenata a 3, RV 690

Critical edition by Alessandro Borin

Edizione critica delle Opere di Antonio Vivaldi

Editore Ricordi, Milan, 2011

The Serenata a tre, RV 690, is the oldest, and in certain respects the most enigmatic of all the Vivaldi serenatas that have come down to us. Its unusual dramaturgy transposes on to an allegorical plane the salient features of the biography of the French Jansenist Jean de Tourreil, who was arrested in Italy on the orders of the Holy Office and imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo. A member of the Arcadian Academy and a correspondent of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Tourreil was a fascinating intellectual of modern type, appreciated by the leading figures of the Italian cultural milieu of his day. An examination of the papers relating to his trial – preserved in the archives of the Episcopal Curia in Florence and the Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede in Rome – has made it possible to reconstruct the significant events leading to his condemnation and belated absolution, allowing us at the same time to formulate some new hypotheses concerning the genesis of Vivaldi’s score, the place where it was performed for the first time and the identity of the person who commissioned it.