The 2025 masterclass of the Accademia Vivaldi, led by Gemma Bertagnolli, will be entirely dedicated to the opera L’inganno trionfante in amore, RV 721, whose first performance took place in the autumn of 1725 at the S. Angelo theatre in Venice.

Five arias from this drama have survived and are preserved in various European libraries: Al balenar del brando (Library of the Benedictine Abbey of Lambach, Austria), Palpita il cor e freme and Son nel mar d’aspri tormenti (Berlin State Library), Langue il fior su l’arsa sponda (Library of the Brussels Conservatory) and S’odo quel rio che mormora (Library of the Arenberg Foundation, Enghien/Edingen, Belgium). A number of arias, such as Se ingrata nube (from La Gloria and Imeneo), from other Vivaldi compositions were included by him in the opera libretto.

The course will conclude with a concert by the students in which the surviving arias from L’inganno trionfante in amore will be performed.

Casanova prima di Casanova 
Costruzione culturale del mito del libertino

On 17 July, in conjunction with the Accademia Vivaldi masterclass, and as part of the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of Giacomo Casanova’s birth, a round table will be organised: “Casanova before Casanova – Cultural construction of the libertine myth” curated by Giada Viviani, in which the contribution of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century operas to the cultural construction of the myth of the libertine will be discussed, of which plots such as L’inganno trionfante in amore develop certain themes.

Treated in particular in 17th-century Venetian academies, but popular until the end of the 18th century, the figure of the libertine embodied philosophical and politico-moral issues such as the legitimacy of freedom of thought, even against the dogmas of the Church, the questioning of civil and religious norms, and the subversion of the rigid hierarchical relations on which the social construct of the Ancient règime was based. The erotic or ambiguous situations on the level of gender connotation, of which Venetian opera of the time - including several works by Vivaldi - offers numerous examples, should also be interpreted in this sense: it was not the sensual element in itself that constituted the main object of representation, but rather its function as a subversive element and, as such, capable of opening up new horizons of the possible on a philosophical, moral and political level.

The round table will be organised in collaboration with the research group ‘La drammaturgia musicale a Venezia (1678-1792)’ of the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi (Venice).