Concerto Italiano

Concerto Italiano comprises both vocalists and an orchestra devoted to Baroque repertoire. After securing acclaim throughout Europe, the ensemble launched international tours and launched extensive recording initiatives, among them a 2022 release devoted to Vivaldi and Bach.

Harpsichordist Rinaldo Alessandrini founded the group in 1984. Its first concert took place that year in Rome with a staging of Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto led by Alessandrini, who has remained music director since inception. For its opening decade the ensemble performed exclusively as a vocal ensemble, concentrating on Monteverdi madrigals and the operas and oratorios of Handel, A. Scarlatti, and other Baroque composers. During those years it steadily earned recognition across Europe as one of Italy’s leading Baroque vocal ensembles. A recording of Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of Madrigals brought wider attention, earning a 1994 Gramophone Award—the first of five the group would receive. Alessandrini added the orchestral arm in 1995. The vocalists reached Japan in 1997 to enthusiastic notices, while the orchestra made its American debut at Lincoln Center in 1999, a stop on a tour that also visited South America, Japan, and additional European cities.

Once the orchestra existed, Concerto Italiano turned particular attention to Vivaldi’s instrumental and operatic works. In the 2000s the ensemble undertook an extensive Naïve project to record all of Vivaldi’s operas and concertos. Time was likewise given to J.S. Bach, Pergolesi, and lesser-known composers such as Giovanni Legrenzi and Francesco Cavalli. Bach performances at Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall in 2000 attracted praise. Rare ventures beyond Baroque literature included a 2001 recording of Rossini arias with soprano María Bayo that drew strong acclaim.

Recordings have appeared chiefly on Naïve and its Opus 111 label, although earlier discs remain available on Brilliant Classics. The ensemble’s most recent Gramophone Award arrived in 2015 for Monteverdi: Vespri solenni per la festa di San Marco. In 2017 Concerto Italiano mounted a world tour of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 marking the composer’s 450th birth anniversary. An album of Bach overtures followed in 2019, and a recording of Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals appeared the next year. The group returned in 2022 with further music by Vivaldi and Bach.