Tempesta di Mare’s “Italians in Vienna” raises an interesting question: Who was greater— Vivaldi, or the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I?

Tempesta di Mare: “Italians in Vienna.” Vivaldi, Concerto for Two Flutes in C, and Perche son molli; Caldara, Concerto for Cello in D Minor; Parsile, Le sofferte; Jommelli, Trio No. 6 for Two Flutes and Cello in D; Fux, Trio Sonata in A; Badia, La Fenice. Michael Maniaci, soprano; Emlyn Ngai, concertmaster.  February 4, 2012 at Arch Street Meeting House, 320 Arch St. (215) 755-8776 or www.tempestadimare.org.

When Italy conquered Austria

Through most of the Baroque period, the kings and princelings who presided over European courts usually spoke French and adapted the customs of the brilliant court created by the French kings at Versailles. But the head of the Hapsburg house was an emperor, not a king.  And the Hapsburgs were, after all, the Hapsburgs. So they spoke Italian at their court in Vienna, and imported Italian composers.

Historical background always adds interest to an early music concert, but Tempesta di Mare’s “Italians in Vienna” program would have been a winner even without any overall theme. The program featured an internationally renowned guest star— countertenor Michael Maniaci— and several instrumental pieces that showcased the virtues of Tempesta’s own musicians.

Maniaci possesses a voice with the range of a female soprano and the color and fullness of a mezzo. It’s a rare gift, and he exploits it with an unforced naturalness that produced some of the most appealing vocal music I’ve heard.

Poke fun if you must

Maniaci displayed his prowess in three cantatas. Two of them dealt with the eternal subject of romantic sorrow. The third— La Fenice (The Phoenix) exemplified that great Baroque genre, the hymn of praise to the ruler who financed the composer’s lifestyle.

This cantata’s first two arias described the life, death and rebirth of its ostensible subject. The third and fourth arias (the other cantatas only had two) delivered the true message of the piece and advised us that the renown of the emperor, Leopold I, is just as immortal as the legendary bird, which is now but “a shadow of the Great Leopold.”

It’s easy to poke fun at such a text, but the silliness of the words merely adds a gentle touch of levity to the pleasures of the music when the musicians are this good.

In the first aria, Maniaci’s voice and Tempesta’s instrumentalists created a happy, beautifully poetic picture of the phoenix, in its prime, flying above the Arabian forests accompanied by songbirds. Gwyn Roberts’s recorder embellished Maniaci’s description of the phoenix’s rebirth. The other arias included treats like concertmaster Emlyn Ngai’s violin accompaniment in the third.

Witty dialogue

The program’s four instrumental pieces were just as good as the cantatas. The opening number, Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Flutes in D, introduced the festivities with a Vivaldian rush. Richard Stone’s guitar added a rustic touch to the surge, and duets for the two flutes, played by Gwyn Roberts and Eve Friedman, contrasted with passages for the whole ensemble. 

The two flutists engaged in some witty, cheerful dialogue in a 1749 trio by Niccolo Jommelli while Eve Miller added the cello’s own style of jauntiness. Miller commanded the stage during the solos in her biggest moment, a cello concerto by Antonio Caldera, and Ngai and second violin Karina Fox engaged in some especially spirited interchanges in a trio sonata by Joseph Fux.

Fux was the program’s only Austrian composer, but he made the cut because he was the empire’s composer-in-chief from 1715 to 1741— the man to whom the court composers reported. His composers were supposed to decorate the leisure hours of an aristocratic, musically sophisticated audience.

In the right hands, their creations can still stimulate a warm glow in the citizens of a great republic on this side of the Atlantic. And one of the composers who contributed to that glow, Antonio Vivaldi, has risen, phoenix-like, from a long period of obscurity and become far more famous than Leopold I.