Vivaldi’s famous The Four Seasons, published in Amsterdam in 1725, were so successful that they almost overshadow his other concertos (of which there are more than five hundred!). Although they owe their success to a particularly expressive and virtuosic “programme music”, Vivaldi was already a master in demand throughout Europe, and his success in opera put him at the forefront of Italian composers, to the point of being particularly admired and performed in France, and of being asked by the French ambassador in Venice to write works in honour of Louis XV.

Here they will be brought to life with vitality by the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal, led from the first solo violin by its conductor Théotime Langlois de Swarte, a true virtuoso of the instrument: in The Four Seasons, he is an irresistible whirlwind, prince of the summer skies and icy demon of winter !