La Gloria e Himeneo
La Gloria e Himeneo (RV 687) is a serenade belonging to the group of so-called “French serenades” by Don Antonio Vivaldi. It is a set of works which also includes the Serenata a 3 (RV 690), La Senna festente (RV 693) and the lost L'unione della Pace e di Marte (RV 694) composed and performed between the mid-1710s and the mid-1720s to celebrate current events and anniversaries relating to the Kingdom of France and its diplomatic representatives resident in Italy.
Gloria e Himeneo was commissioned from Vivaldi by Jacques-Vincent Languet, Comte de Gergy, then French ambassador to Venice, on the occasion of the wedding of Louis XV to the Polish princess Maria Leszczyńska and was performed during a party organized in the embassy garden on the evening of 12 September 1725.
The serenade RV 687 reworks the topos of the “contest”, one of the most exploited models in this poetic-musical genre. Hymen, the Greek god son of Apollo, and the allegorical personification of Glory compete to extol the virtues of the married couple honored in the composition, amplifying, rather than contradicting, each other's statements. In the first two recitatives the two characters begin by introducing Louis the great king whom the Seine always honors and Princess Mary of the northern sky the rarest and greatest beauty. Afterwards they continue alone or more often as a couple, to foresee to the spouses the imminent joys of the wedding and the future joys of the fruits of their union. The final “reconciliation”, which in this genre was generally achieved with the intervention of a tertium super partes, is here replaced by applause for the celebration and for Ambassador Languet who deserves credit for having sponsored it.
In La Gloria e Himeneo Vivaldi's music, which includes some pieces taken from his contemporary operatic productions, is a compendium of the best the composer wrote during the third decade of the century. Due to the brevity of the recitatives, whose function is almost exclusively to prepare and connect the musical numbers, and the total absence of a plot, this serenade can be considered in all respects a "concert of arias" (Konzertarien), that is to say that form of spectacle so deprecated by musical historiography as it is appreciated by the modern listener, for whom this music maintains all its charm and value unaltered.