Pergolesi: L'Olimpiade (2CD)

More than 60 composers have set Metastasio’s libretto for *L’Olimpiade* to music. Among them are Caldara, Vivaldi, Hasse, Leo, and Scarlatti, as well as Piccinni, Paisiello, and Cherubini, and also Pergolesi, who staged his *Olimpiade* during Carnival 1735 at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome. It was to be his last opera seria, as the composer died the very next year at the age of only twenty-five. His version is regarded by many as the most inspired of all, characterized by musical originality and joyful freshness that is at once brilliant and refined. Following the rediscovery of the unpublished Mass in D major, Giulio Prandi and his Ghislieri Ensemble return to Pergolesi with a recording of his operatic masterpiece, made in the 18th-century theater in Jesi, his hometown: an initiative of the Pergolesi-Spontini Foundation, which has been dedicated to preserving his legacy for many years.