Vivaldi set the story to some of his finest music, in a score filled with dazzling arias and showcasing some of the most expressive recitatives found in any Baroque opera. While the poem presents a number of different stories and episodes, the opera deals with the epic's main plot line - the tale of the knight Orlando, who falls in love with the wrong woman and promptly loses his marbles. A literal translation of the title might be 'Crazy Orlando,' and that pretty much fits the bill. Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso premiered in 1727 in Venice. In the next century, Rossini and Haydn also wrote Orlando -based operas.

Handel wrote three operas derived from Ariosto's masterpiece, starting with Orlando in 1733.

The new form of theater gave Ariosto's story a new lease on life that it still enjoys today - while the original poem and its creator have faded into literary history.Īriosto's epic began inspiring operas in the 1620s, and dozens of composers have since climbed onto the Orlando bandwagon.

But the poet died in 1533, so he wasn't around to benefit some 60 years later, when a group of inventive writers and musicians in Italy joined forces to create the genre we call opera. It was an immediate hit and it made Ariosto famous - at least for a while. In 1516, Ariosto came up with an epic poem called Orlando Furioso, filled with passion, violence, mystery and magic.

Vivaldi opera