While our contemporary era is unfortunately still full of crises and threats, the decade in which Vivaldi composed the works on our programme has nothing to envy the present day. The dark events of the 1720s meant that Vivaldi's century could not yet be described as the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. The upheavals of the War of Succession to the Spanish throne - a veritable bloodbath throughout Europe - the still numerous epidemics of plague and smallpox, and the violence orchestrated by various tyrannies, made it a time of insidious anxiety.

Vivaldi's motets, composed for the most part for the daughters of the Pietà - angels of light on earth - are the musical embodiment of these hopes. The storms and gusts of sound that abound in these lyrical miniatures, metaphors for the turbulence that overwhelms Europe, precede the appearance of a comforting light. For in the convulsions of restless nature, the Divina Stella, the divine star that enlightens humanity, is already shining. This chiaroscuro that inhabits the vibrant, theatrical works in our selection teaches us patience and confidence in the coming of better days, when music will guide troubled souls.