ABSTRACT
The actual relation between cantata and opera is a complicated topic that touches on the nature of both genres and of the dramatic. In the dramatic cantatas two or more characters converse with each other without intervention from the poet, and an action or transaction is presumed to take place; Joseph Scheibe later explained that these cantatas were identical to short operas except that they lacked staging and costume. The authors of Antonio Lucio Vivaldi's cantata texts are nearly all unknown. A Monsignor Barbieri, later secretary to Pope Benedict XIII, wrote the texts of some arias by Vivaldi that were sung at the palace of the Colonna in Rome in 1723, but it is not known whether any of these arias belonged to any of the extant cantatas. The form of Vivaldi's Tintendo si, two arias linked by a recitative, is found in slightly over half of his cantatas.
