Let’s play a word association game. I say Vivaldi, you say?

Right, The Four Seasons. Le Quattro Stagioni. And by The Four Seasons, most really mean the first movement of La Primavera. Almost a musical cliche, it’s a catchy tune that has infiltrated popular culture and has typecast the music of Antonio Lucio Vivaldi in a single narrow light: Mostly string concertos filled with arpeggiated chords and harmonic sequences to entertain us till the end of days.

As a flutist, I too was slightly jaded. The piccolo concertos (recorder) are a staple of the repertoire, maybe due a general scarcity of good works. But in their defense, they are a delight to perform, once you get over the initial shock and technical demand.

But in his days, Vivaldi also was known as an opera impresario. Opera was the most popular musical entertainment and Vivaldi had some successful runs, some delayed due to censorship and others interrupted by unpopularity.

Perhaps it is my exposure to coloratura mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli (obsession with her really) and her freak-like abilities that encouraged me to look into his 50 discovered operas, although he claimed to have written 94 in a letter to one of his patrons. That's quite prolific considering Mozart wrote 22, Puccini wrote 10 (Il Trittrico is three one-act operas) and Wagner wrote 13.

“Yes. It is typical Vivaldi: The music, the impressive virtuosic passages and beautiful melodies coupled with exciting string passages,” Antoine Plante, artistic director of Mercury Baroque, says.

Technical passages usually difficult for physical instruments — Vivaldi was a virtuoso violinist — become rather superhuman feats for the voice.

Plante is in the midst of preparing for a regional concert premiere of one of Vivaldi’s operas: Montezuma (librettist Luigi Giusti titled it Motezuma, without the “n,” somewhat strange considering Montezuma, with the “n” was more common among English speakers) based on the Aztec ruler. (Mercury Baroque's Montezuma will premiere Saturday night at 8 p.m. at the Wortham Center.)

A premiere of an opera from a composer who died in 1741? And with a historical reference to Mexico?

“The theme is rather unusual,” Plante explains. “The fact that it is set in the New World is peculiar. But it is not meant to be a history lesson. There are a few colorful references to Mexican geography and Aztec religion.”

Although Vivaldi could have taken a righteous approach to the themes of colonization and Catholic indoctrination, the religious theme is underplayed in favor of a more universal love story reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet.

“It’s mostly a story about relationships, love, fear and treason.” That’s Plante’s take on the work.

A work lost since 1733, scholars had come across theater archives and records of Motezuma performances. The libretto was available, but the whereabouts of the score were unknown. And the story of the sheet music could be a dramatic opera in itself, not unlike the emotive and overtly emotional aesthetic of the baroque and reminiscent of the popular red violin story.

Once upon a time, there was a collection of music stolen from Berlin by the Russian army after World War II, later finding its way to Kiev via various cities in the USSR. It is speculated that Ukraine returned them to their rightful owners, the Berlin Sing-Akademie choral society, as an act to portray Ukraine in better light in its quest to be a part of the European Union. Hidden away in a storage container, the music’s discovery in 2002 led to more challenges: The score appeared fragmented as complete sections were missing.

“The musical reconstruction of the missing parts were done by Alessandro Ciccolini in collaboration with Alan Curtis,” Plante explains. “ He composed the missing recitatives and adapted arias using his vast knowledge of his operatic style and borrowing from Vivaldi’s other operas including Tito Manlio, Farnace, L’incoronazione di Dario, La Virtu Trionfante and Bajazet.”

There was also a copyright dispute that halted one performance and forced another to be changed into a hodgepodge of spoken Montezuma libretto interspersed with other Vivaldi arias to avoid heavy fines and jail time due to a court injunction. Once lifted, the modern staged premiere took place in Düsseldorf in September 2005.

And the score lived happily ever after.

In its time, the work could have been banned as it was the practice at the time to prohibit anything that questioned national and religious ideals. In the opera, Montezuma is not a barbarian and Fernando, General of the Spanish armies, is not portrayed as the hero. This sort of emotional depth equality has an aura of Enlightenment ideals.

For the performance, Mercury Baroque cast Michael Maniaci, male soprano, for the role of Fernando. Maniaci has an unusual ability to sing the soprano tessitura without using falsetto, an ability that gives him the musical flexibility and vocal power usually found in the castrati of yesteryear.

Most male singers who acquire this unusual ability have it as a direct result of a hormonal imbalance but in the case of Maniaci, his larynx did not develop in the usual manner. His voice is unlike most countertenors (male sopranos sing higher) or women singers, launching his career quite rapidly already having performed at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Pittsburgh Opera, Royal Danish Opera and Opera North, among others.

He is no stranger in Houston. He is remembered as the 1999 winner of the Houston Grand Opera Competition.

Mercury Baroque’s performance would make the second American performance to date and thematically, coincides nicely with Houston Celebrates Mexico 2010, a year of festivities around the Bicentennial of Mexico’s Independence and the Centennial of the Mexican Revolution.

Tickets are currently on sale and range between $20-$55. There's a pre-concert lecture at 7:15 p.m. from Dr. Yvonne Kendall in the Wortham Theater’s Green Room.

Joel Luks further investigates baroque music with the help of friends at Mercury Baroque:

A look at Michael Maniaci