Pergolesi: L’Olimpiade – Orchestra Ghislieri

More than 60 composers have set Metastasio’s libretto to music. Ranging from Caldara, Vivaldi, Hasse, Leo and Scarlatti to Piccinni, Paisiello and Cherubini, they also include Pergolesi, who for the Carnival season of 1735 presented his L’Olimpiade at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome. It was to be last his opera seria, as the composer, a mere twenty-five-year-old, was to die the very next year. His version is considered by many to be the most inspired of all, marked by musical originality of joyful freshness, both brilliant and refined. After the rediscovery of the unpublished Mass in D major, Giulio Prandi and his Ghislieri ensemble return to Pergolesi with a recording of his operatic masterpiece made in the 18th-century theatre of Jesi, his native city: an initiative of the Pergolesi Spontini Foundation that has been promoting his legacy for many years.