Episode 2

Continuing Donald Macleod's exploration of two centuries of Italian opera from Monteverdi to Rossini. The second programme focuses on a single decade, the 1720s, and the work of three giants of their day, whom history has treated rather differently: Alessandro Scarlatti; Antonio Vivaldi; and George Frideric Handel. Today Alessandro Scarlatti's reputation is outshone by that of his son Domenico, but he was one of the major musical figures of his time, with over 100 operas to his credit - of which very few are ever performed today.

Unlike Scarlatti, Vivaldi's operatic 'rehabilitation' is well under way, but despite his considerable output - he's known to have composed at least 50 operas, 16 of which have survived - he's still far better known for his instrumental music. Time has been kinder to Handel's operas, many of which are regularly staged today. Handel was German by birth, but he spent a good chunk of his early professional life in Italy, writing opera in the Italian language and the Italian tradition, and he carried on doing so after he settled in London in 1712.

It's a sign of the enormous international success of Italian opera that its leading exponent in the late Baroque, only a century or so after its invention, wasn't actually an Italian!