Great was the interest among Vivaldians and opera-lovers when a score of a large portion of Vivaldi"s lost opera Motezuma (1733) was unexpectedly discovered among manuscripts from the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, returned to Berlin from Kiev in 2000. The find was providential, since in recent decades practically all of Vivaldi"s performable operatic music has been presented to the public. The newly discovered work has thus given a much-needed fillip to everyone concerned with Vivaldi"s operas. Scholarly discussion was initiated in an international symposium held at the De Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam in June 2005 alongside the work"s first modern performance. From the start, it was planned that the papers read at the symposium, augmented by essays commissioned from other scholars, would be gathered into a book centering on Motezuma.