Opus 111’s Vivaldi series continues to expand at bewildering pace, as indeed it needs to if its aim of recording the 450 Vivaldi manuscripts in the National Library in Turin is to reach completion this side of Kingdom Come. This is the third opera it has brought out, following the rewarding releases of L’Olimpiade (3/03) and La verità in cimento (8/03), and in its own way it is no less fascinating. Orlando finto pazzo (‘Orlando feigns madness’) was the second of Vivaldi’s numerous operas and his first for the Venetian stage. Alas, the records do not tell us whether its run in the spring of 1714 met with success or failure, but what is certain is that with this work Vivaldi – by then already famous as a violinist and composer of concertos – set out for real on one of the busiest operatic careers of the first half of the 18th century.

Despite its title, the story is not from the usual Orlando source, Ariosto’s poem Orlando furioso, but plunders instead Boiardo’s earlier Orlando inamorato, which offers a similarly tragicomic mix of love, intrigue and magic. The title is a reference to Orlando’s famous madness, actual in Ariosto but here pretended for no obviously compelling reason, and in fact forming no more than a couple of episodes in a convoluted and unengaging plot built around a love-pentangle (no less), and further complicated by various disguises and rampant dissembling. The booklet sees fit to print a diagram, and I must say I found myself referring to it rather frequently.

As it happens, Vivaldi does not on this evidence appear to have been a natural musical dramatist. Though the libretto is partly to blame, you will not find here the delineation and development of character that you would in Handel, and the two ‘mad scenes’ – both set as rambling recitatives – seem like missed opportunities compared to similar moments in Orlando-based operas by Handel and Lully. Yet what makes this music worth hearing is that Vivaldi’s evident desire to make an operatic splash at his first major attempt finds an outlet in music of irrepressible zest and personality; while his later operas were prey to Neapolitan fashion, this early attempt is unmistakably his, deploying all the fiery and ebullient energy of his concertos and allying it to vocal music of neck-tingling excitement. Like Haydn, Vivaldi may not have been a great opera composer, but he did write operas full of great music.

Alessandro de Marchi’s joyous recording brings together a typical Italian Baroque cast, not as starry as in Opus 111’s previous Vivaldi operas perhaps, but fully competent throughout. Gemma Bertagnolli and Sonia Prina both reproduce the form they have shown in other recent Vivaldi recordings, and all cope wonderfully with the composer’s ruthless demands. Antonio Abete has little chance to shine as Orlando, but in a role that is more about acting than singing – it is almost all in recitative – one might have hoped for more from him. Indeed, the performance as a whole lacks that final ounce of quicksilver theatricality that would have come from a staged production.

Stagings of Vivaldi operas are likely to remain rarities, however; what we have here is a performance and recording of skill and enthusiasm, and for that we can be thankful. By the way, Opus 111’s inclusion of some of the arias Vivaldi wrote for later productions as an appendix is welcome, but seems to have confused the booklet editor, who has got the two alternative arias for Act 3 scene 7 swapped round.