Leonardo Vinci : La Partenope

   in Opera Now (Oct, 2012)
You’ll remember that Handel’s version is a comedy, but Leonardo Vinci’s 1725 effort, based on the same libretto – described by opera manager Owen Swiney as ‘the very worst book (excepting one) that I ever read in my whole life’ – really doesn’t seem to be. This is a live recording of what must have been a very tedious evening in the theatre. Handel admired Vinci but this performance makes him sound very ordinary – an uninspired imitator of Vivaldi, full of hammering bass-lines and tiresome sequences. The conducting (Antonio Florio) has no life, the playing (I Turchini) little variety, the music itself only rarely blossoms out of standard Baroque pleasantness …