It is rare to witness the restitution of a work which, though rooted in the heart of the Neapolitan Seicento, reaches us with the subtle aura of things lost and found. The three-voice serenata Clori, Lidia e Filli by Alessandro Scarlatti, rediscovered by Elia Pivetta in collaboration with Simone Vallerotonda, belongs precisely to this fragile and luminous category: a unicum within the vast Scarlattian corpus, preserved in a single source at the Library of the Conservatoire Royal in Brussels, and almost certainly linked to a specific occasion — the celebration of the Octave of Corpus Domini in 1701, held in Naples at the Palazzo della Posta.

A small contemporary chronicle, recorded in the Gazzetta di Napoli of 7 June, tells us that that evening concluded “with chosen voices and noble instruments”, and the mention of the “Regio Mastro di Cappella Scarlatti” suggests an atmosphere of musical splendour which the rediscovered score allows us to perceive at every page.

The structure and uniqueness of the work
The prescribed ensemble — two sopranos and a contralto, two violins, viola, lute and continuo — outlines a narrative microcosm in which the typical alternation of recitatives, arias and duets is interspersed with frequent instrumental ritornellos, a sign of a lively, theatrical writing fully immersed in the affective aesthetic of the late Seicento.

Yet the most surprising feature remains the obbligato lute: in a central aria the lute engages in a true concertante dialogue with the voice of Filli, responding afterwards to the concertino of strings and harpsichord. It is an unusual choice for Scarlatti, who here seems intent on elevating an instrument generally relegated to the shadowed plane of the continuo to the dignity of a protagonist.
This detail alone suffices to clarify why this rediscovery is anything but secondary: we are faced with an expressive fragment capable of reshaping our perception of Scarlatti’s way of conceiving voice and instrumental colour.

The tour of the rebirth
From its modern debut at the Bologna Festival to Musikàmera (Venice), the cycle of concerts has progressively brought into focus an interpretative language ever more attuned to the spirit of the score. The subsequent stages in Udine, Messina and Lamezia Terme consolidated this reading, guiding it towards its natural concluding destination: Rome, in the intimate and symbolically charged setting of the Refettorio dei Minimi at Trinità dei Monti.

It is a journey that reveals how a “new” score — new for us, ancient in its origins — needs time to breathe in the hands of its interpreters, to mature in colour, in agogics, in phrasing.

The role of I Bassifondi and the hand of Vallerotonda
This revival cannot be understood without considering the artistic identity of I Bassifondi, the ensemble founded by Simone Vallerotonda to explore a repertoire that brings together lute, theorbo, baroque guitar and continuo within a philological perspective attentive to sources, diminution manuals and improvisation as the living core of seventeenth-century practice.

Vallerotonda’s hallmark — the result of a solid training and a personal philosophical and musicological research — is the capacity to combine: rigour of sources, rhetorical naturalness, theatrical intelligence, a refined sense of colour and word.

The choice to approach a serenata of such complexity, with such a singular profile, reveals a musical thought capable of reading Scarlatti beyond the cliché of pastoral opera, bringing to light his most experimental vein.

The three voices on stage
The pastoral triangle entrusted to Valeria La Grotta (Filli), Gaia Petrone (Clori) and Francesca Boncompagni (Lidia) gathers three very different vocal identities, united however by a common denominator: deep familiarity with the Italian Seicento repertoire.

La Grotta, with her clear and controlled line, possesses the suppleness required to sustain the dialogue with the obbligato lute; Boncompagni brings the stylistic precision matured in the broader baroque repertoire; Petrone provides density and centre to the lower tessitura, finding in her contralto hue a rare equilibrium.

It is a vocal ensemble capable of tackling a chamber-like writing that demands precision as well as gentle flexibility: not “voices over instruments”, but voices breathing within the instrumental texture.