Following common Baroque practice, Bajazet (Verona, 1735) is what's known as a pasticcio, and Vivaldi mixes his own music with recyclings from fellow composers. Incredibly, this is the first time a Vivaldi opera has been staged at Covent Garden: a red-letter night for the Red Priest. Vivaldi in Bajazet may have been setting himself up for unfavourable comparison with Handel, who tackled the same subject in Tamerlano, but this performance by INO makes a strong case for the Venetian composer. Though no other composer ever caught the glitter of La Serenissima quite so alluringly, the dismissal of Vivaldi by Stravinsky as “a dull fellow who could compose the same form so many times over” has persisted. It's true that Handelians still tend to sneer at Vivaldi, in particular disparaging his plots.
If this might have been expected to stoke rivalries – not between composers but between their fans – the mood was more one of an exciting celebration of Baroque opera. For probably the first time in its history, the Royal Opera House had two Baroque works playing simultaneously on the same night: Handel's Theodora up on the main stage and Vivaldi's Bajazet downstairs in the Linbury Theatre, in a debuting co-production with Irish National Opera.
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