When the music is by Mozart, no amount of wind and storm can dampen the fête-champêtre pleasures of country-house opera, but when it is by Vivaldi, there’s more of a problem. The celebrated composer of The Four Seasons is perhaps the most baffling recent enthusiasm of Garsington Opera’s present general director, Anthony Whitworth-Jones. For the second time in three years — and, be warned, there’s more to come in 2012, with, yes, L’Olimpiade (The Olympic Games) — he has programmed one of the Red Priest’s operas and demonstrated, yet again, that Vivaldi couldn’t hold a candle to Handel as a musical dramatist.
For its third production at its splendid new home on Mark Getty’s Wormsley estate, WhitworthJones’s choice has fallen on La verita in