After ten years as one of Italy’s leading operatic composers, Vivaldi got the call to travel to Rome, most likely at the suggestion of Gasparini, now living in the Eternal City, who had known ‘The Red Priest’ as a colleague at Venice’s Ospedale. The result was two and a half operas (the half was a three-way commission) including Il Giustino of 1724, here receiving its third studio recording as part of Naïve’s recently revived Vivaldi Edition. It follows on from Estévan Velardi’s 2001 four-hour marathon version on Bongiovanni and Alan Curtis’s heavily abridged 2002 take on Virgin.

Although the convoluted plot, concerning the rise to the Imperial throne of the virtuous, lowly born Justinius...