It is odd now to imagine a world without Vivaldi’s Gloria, Stabat mater and Beatus vir, but it was only in 1926 that monks at a monastery just east of Turin discovered crates of Vivaldi manuscripts containing some 300 works, over 50 of them comprising church music. To this day, most of us can claim to know just a few, but with this landmark set there is no further excuse. The choir and soloists are a veritable ‘who’s who’ of Baroque performance both now and in the recent past—Joyce DiDonato, Charles Daniels, Nathalie Stutzmann, Carolyn Sampson, Robin Blaze, James Bowman, Susan Gritton, Sarah Connolly, Neal Davies and more. Expense was never spared. This collection sheds light on Vivaldi’s great diversity of styles and instrumentation. Many of the composer’s earliest and final works appear to have been written with the all-female forces of the Pietà in mind. Other works dating from a ‘middle’ period (which stretches from the mid-1720s to the early 1730s) are especially flamboyant and include the celebrated Dixit Dominus, RV594. For this re-issue Hyperion has stayed true to the authoritative 11CD set collated from recordings made between 1994 and 2002. An essay by Michael Talbot is offered in English, French and German, while sung texts are presented in their original Latin and in English.