Portraying either the Amazons of myth or Greek warriors, the castrati must have been quite a scene and made quite a sound. There was a Papal ban on women appearing on stage at the time and so the opera was sung by seven castrati and a male tenor, the latter singing the title role, Hercules. Not since Luciano Pavarotti recorded the title role of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” has a mainstream operatic tenor reached back into the past with such powerful and persuasive results.Ercole su’l Termodonte was Vivaldi’s 16th opera, appearing in 1723 in Rome.

This madrigal of love and war is hardly obscure, but a new recording by Emmanuelle Haïm’s Concert d’Astrée (on Virgin) features the tenor Rolando Villazón, who brings a virile verismo manner to this late-Renaissance masterwork. Mark’s Basilica for thirty years his magnificent “Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda” had its première at the Palazzo Mocenigo during the carnival season of 1624-25. Perhaps the greatest composer associated with Venice was Claudio Monteverdi, who served as the music director of St. The vigor and originality of the piece make it just as entertaining for their parents. The late writer and designer Beni Montresor wrote the libretto, and this new release (on Orange Mountain Music) is packaged like a book kids can read along while the music goes by. For “The Witches of Venice,” that audience is primarily children, and this opera-ballet, which débuted at La Scala in 1995, is one of his most appealing works.

Philip Glass, a superior man of the theatre, has always known his audience.

Vivaldi tenor arias