And occasionally, when listening to this performance of Vivaldi's 'dramma per musica' Atenaide, premiered in 1728 and not heard for 278 years, I felt inclined to agree. The work's plot is complex, centring on a love triangle but branching horizontally and vertically to include various intertwined character dilemmas and relationships. It is to the credit of the libretto that the work's great length, of over three and a half hours, does not prove tiresome, especially given that the drama is conveyed, with but one exception, through recitative and solo arias. It is Vivaldi's music that proves occasionally problematic.

Atenaide opens as Eudossa (confusingly, the title character, under a different name) says goodbye to her father before her marriage to Teodosio. Father Leontino carries a whiff of Polonius with him, as he instructs his offspring on the dos and don'ts, but we feel the Walküre-esque poignancy of the moment in the libretto's lyrical, fluid lines. Vivaldi, oddly, designates Leontino's aria of farewell Ti stringo in quest'amplesso bouncy, syncopated rhythms, with only the sometimes descending melodic lines and snatches of a minor key reminding one that this is, theoretically, a sorrowful solo. Conversely, Teodosio's Act One declaration of love, Tutto amor, is slow and in the minor key (the most beautiful aria in the work until that point, but surely this moment should not come across as melancholic). Leontino's Mal s'accende is more successful. The aria notes the futility of anger, the tenor coloratura suggests the anger, and that the decorative lines are orchestrally unsupported suggests their futility.

One wonders also whether Vivaldi occasionally fails, in the score, to strike a preferable balance of happy and sad, of fast and slow. The da capo form inevitably leads to much flowery ornamentation in the vocal lines, but there are various passages where the briskly-paced, highly decorative arias follow in such quick succession as to leave one gasping, with little to provide musical and thus dramatic contrast. In Act One especially, I often found myself regretting the arrival of an aria, finding the subtle inflections of the recitatives immensely more gripping. But then the level of musical inspiration seems to greaten considerably as the work progresses, leading to a scintillating final act in which every note counts towards the tense, unravelling drama (the one exception perhaps is Varane's pastoral Mesto va l'agricoltore, which tends to hold up the narrative at a dramatically critical moment).

Indeed, Vivaldi's score, in response to the taut libretto, frequently displays tremendous colour and imagination. In Act Two, Pulcheria's Sorge l'irato nembo (a repeated number from Orlando Furioso) shows the composer at his most inspired, the orchestra rising from nothing to powerfully evoke gathering storm clouds, the B section's eerily sparse orchestration suggesting the vanishing clouds' division to reveal clear blue sky. In Act Three, Eudossa's scena is admirably composed. The string pizzicati in the following number, Marziano's Cor mio, successfully suggest both the character's inner-entrapment and the beautiful crepuscular setting. If the characters are not drawn as tightly as they would be in, say, Handel's mature works, the overall effect is convincing. By the work's conclusion, as the soloists join to sing a fifty second capitulation, one feels to be at the end of a lengthy and exhilarating journey.

It is the musical performance that makes one wish to hear the work again. Federico Maria Sardelli conducts the Baroque band Modo Antiquo with vigour and precision; the alert continuo nudges the lengthy recitatives forward with urgency. The vocal casting could hardly be bettered, with Sandrine Piau a committed Eudossa, Nathalie Stutzmann a resonant and passionate Marziano and Stefano Ferrari a slightly dry-voiced but convincingly scheming Probo. The entire cast is admirably characterful and committed, and that the performance was recorded in the theatre for which it was originally intended, La Pergola in Florence, is perhaps what lends the drama such intense immediacy. This is an ideal recording of a flawed and fascinating work. Here is another essential addition to Naïve's outstandingly ambitious Vivaldi series.

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