Aria of Griselda (Griselda)

Griselda was staged at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice on 18 May 1735, from a libretto Apostolo Zeno had written in 1701 and Carlo Goldoni was asked to revise. Goldoni described their first meeting as an ordeal: Vivaldi wanted the verse reshaped around the voice of Anna Giró, and the two eventually settled into a working compromise. The plot tests a wife's obedience well past the point of cruelty, and the score answers with extremes of its own. Agitata da due venti, with its two contrary winds, has carried the opera back into concert life ahead of the stage.