Serenata a tre

In Vivaldi’s time, serenatas were written for special occasions such as the birth of a child, a birthday, a wedding, etc.. The settings were generally bucolic and the characters based on gods and other well-known personage of Arcadia.  In contrast with operas, serenata casts were small, with a minimum of two singers, and rarely more than three or four, and they were of much shorter length. Of the eight serenatas which are known to have been written by Vivaldi, the music for only three of them have survived.