More than 60 composers have set Metastasio's libretto to music, including Caldara, Vivaldi, Hasse, Leo, Scarlatti, Piccinni, Paisiello, Cherubini and, of course, Pergolesi, who presented his Olimpiade at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome for the Carnival season of 1735. It was to be his last opera seria, as the composer died the very next year, just after he turned twenty-six. His version is considered by many to be the most inspired of all, characterised by a musical originality as ingenious as it is refined, brimming with joyful freshness. Following the rediscovery of the previously unpublished Mass in D major, Giulio Prandi and his Orchestra Ghislieri return to Pergolesi with a recording of his operatic masterpiece made in the 18th-century theatre of Jesi, his hometown: an initiative of the Pergolesi Spontini Foundation, which has been promoting the composer's legacy for many years.
