request by
capricorn-leader: Tom Payne as A N T O N I O V I V A L D I
Born on march 4, 1678 in Venice, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was ordained as a priest at 25 (as a reference to the color of his hair, he was soon nicknamed il Prete Rosso,“The Red Priest”), though he instead chose to follow his passion for music. A virtuoso violinist and prolific composer who created hundreds of works, he became renowned for his concertos in Baroque style, becoming a highly influential innovator in form and pattern. As favorite of Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi was publicly named a knight. Yet, his renown in early life did not translate into lasting financial success. Eclipsed by younger composers, Vivaldi left Venice for Vienna. He died in poverty on July 28, 1741. He was buried in a simple grave after a funeral service that proceeded without music.
Personality:
Anna Girò
is known above all for her professional association with Antonio Vivaldi - a relationship suspected, at the time, of carrying over into their private lives, although modern research suggests the opposite. Anna’s father was a wig-maker of French extraction. The singer’s actual name was Teseire – Italianized to Tessieri – whereas Giro was a sobriquet her father had used. About 1722 she went to Venice to study singing, living with an elder half-sister, Paolina, who acted as her chaperone. She made her operatic début in Treviso in autumn 1723; her first appearance on the Venetian stage was in Albinoni’s Laodice (autumn 1724). Giro sang in over 50 operatic productions. She started, in her early teens, with minor travesty roles, then graduated to seconda donna and soon also to prima donna roles. Vivaldi, for whom she sang (nearly always as prima donna) in over 30 productions from 1726 to 1739, appears to have been her principal mentor. He once declared, with evident exaggeration, that he could not put on an opera without her, but she was well able to operate independently of him, as she proved during his transalpine tour of 1729 - 31 (when Giro was performing alongside Farinelli in Broschi’s Ezio and Porpora’s Poro) and again after his death in 1741. Her very successful career lasted until 1748, when, after singing in Piacenza at Carnival, she married a widowed count from that city, Antonio Maria Zanardi Landi, and retired honourably from the stage.
One fact: The amendments to the libretto of Zeno’s Griselda that Vivaldi instructed Goldoni to make in 1735 were designed to hide her defects and promote her strengths.
One quote: She was not pretty, but she had charms, a very slim waist, beautiful eyes, lovely hair, a charming mouth, and a small voice, but a great deal of acting ability. (Carlo Goldoni)
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (born March 4, 1678, Venice)
Vivaldi’s main teacher was probably his father, Giovanni Battista, who
in 1685 was admitted as a violinist to the orchestra of the San MarcoBasilica in Venice.
Antonio, the eldest child, trained for the priesthood and was ordained
in 1703. His distinctive reddish hair would later earn him the
soubriquet Il Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”). Health
problems (chronic shortness of breath) prevented him from delivering mass and drove him to abandon the
priesthood shortly after his ordination. At the age of 25, Antonio Vivaldi was named master of violin at the
Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice. The
Ospedale was an institution where orphans received instruction – the
boys in trades and the girls in music. Under Vivaldi’s leadership, the orchestra gained
international attention. In 1716, he was promoted to music director. In
addition to his choral music and concerti, Vivaldi had begun regularly
writing opera scores by 1715; about 50 of these scores remain. Besides his regular employment, Vivaldi accepted a number of
short-term positions funded by patrons in Mantua and Rome. It was during
his term in Mantua, from around 1717 to 1721, that he wrote his
four-part masterpiece, The Four Seasons. He paired the pieces with four sonnets, which he may have written himself. Vivaldi’s fans and patrons included members of European royal families. Vivaldi’s renown as a composer and musician in early life did not
translate into lasting financial success. Eclipsed by younger composers
and more modern styles, Vivaldi left Venice for Vienna, Austria,
possibly hoping to find a position in the imperial court located there.
He found himself without a prominent patron following the death of
Charles VI, however, and died in poverty in Vienna on July 28, 1741. He
was buried in a simple grave after a funeral service that proceeded
without music.
The early morning sun is beginning to break through the clouds as Classic FM arrives at Turin’s Biblioteca Nazionale, the oldest national library in Italy. Shafts of filtered sunlight reveal the elaborate 19th-century façade in all its glory, highlighting the gleaming white stone walls and the green bronze roof, settling on the sculpted crest above the entrance, and casting an ethereal glow across the Piazza Carlo Alberto, over which this building grandly presides.
But despite such a magnificent exterior, it’s what Classic FM discovers inside that leaves a lasting impression. In a small room, volume upon volume of immaculately preserved manuscripts are piled up on a table. As Classic FM leafs through the pages of parchment paper, allowing our finger to travel the outline of each beautifully written note, our eyes rest on an insignia – the insignia of Antonio Vivaldi.
There are 27 volumes here altogether, containing 92 per cent of Vivaldi’s autograph manuscripts – 450 in total – all found at the composer’s home in Vienna when he died. The works represented include nearly 300 concertos and 20 operas, 14 of which are complete. With one exception, no complete Vivaldi opera has been found in any other library or collection. But how did the manuscripts turn up here, in a city that, by all accounts, Vivaldi never even visited?
The story goes that, upon Vivaldi’s death in 1741, the manuscripts were inherited by his brother, Francesco – a barber and wig-maker in Venice – who then sold them to a Venetian senator, Count Jacopo Soranzo. From him, the manuscripts passed to Count Giacomo Durazzo, who kept them in his palace on the Grand Canal. Upon his death, they were transported to Genoa, where they remained at the family villa for a century.
In 1893, the volumes were divided equally between two brothers from the Durazzo family. When one, Marcello, died, he left his part of the collection to a monastery near Alessandria, an hour east of Turin. In 1926, the monastery needed to raise money for repair work and contacted the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin for an evaluation of the manuscripts’ worth.
Realising their value, the library approached a wealthy businessman, who purchased the volumes in memory of his son who had died. But the remaining manuscripts were still in Genoa, and it was only after lengthy negotiations that, in 1930, the last heirs of the Durazzo family agreed to sell them. By strange coincidence, these, too, were bought for the library by a businessman in memory of a deceased son.
With the manuscripts reunited, it was only a matter of time before word spread as to their existence. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the American poet Ezra Pound made an early attempt to catalogue the music. Then, in 1947, the Ricordi publishing house in Milan began editing and publishing modern editions, focusing purely on the instrumental music.
But where was Turin in all of this? Recognising the need for the city that housed the manuscripts to get involved, chief musicologist for the region Alberto Basso – who had already spent some time cataloguing the collection – came up with the idea of recording the manuscripts in their entirety. He approached the French record label Naïve and, in 2000, the Vivaldi Edition project was born. So far, 25 titles have been released, including six operas. With every opera, because no printed editions exist, Vivaldi scholars must study the manuscripts and prepare a critical edition before it can be performed. The musicians, too, study the original manuscripts – or photocopies of them – in order to create performances that are definitive and authentic.
Which brings us back to why Classic FM is here in this historic city. We’ve been invited to the first performance in Turin of Vivaldi’s opera Orlando Furioso, a recently released world premiere recording on Naïve. During my visit, Classic FM meets the Vivaldi Edition’s director Susan Orlando, who explains the importance of the project.
“It has been especially instrumental in bringing to light Vivaldi’s importance as a vocal composer,” she says. “The operas have been a real revelation.”
Orlando is pleased that Vivaldi’s music is being given the recognition it deserves. “His music imparts a joie de vivre, though it can also be very profound. It speaks to you on the first listening – a phenomenon that’s not true for most composers. With Vivaldi, the first time you hear his music, it will move you.”
The many fine period musicians involved with the Vivaldi Edition agree. When Classic FM meets up with dynamic French conductor Jean-Christophe Spinosi, who is conducting his Ensemble Matheus in Orlando Furioso later that evening, his comments about Vivaldi are all in the superlative.
“With Vivaldi’s music I can express everything,” he enthuses. “In his operas, Vivaldi understands human passions and translates those into his music. It’s direct from the note to the heart.”
Spinosi is particularly excited because he has just seen the manuscripts in the flesh for the first time. “To see the originals was very impressive,” he says, looking like a small boy at Christmas.
His enthusiasm is infectious, particularly during the concert itself. At one point, his baton flies out of his hands and into the back row of the strings, but the audience doesn’t care – they’re transfixed by the energy, the excitement and the beauty of what they’re hearing, and with the spine-tingling knowledge that every note being performed is handwritten by the composer himself on bound parchment paper, preserved in a building just a few streets away.
Antonio Vivaldi, Guitar Concerto in D Major, II Largo Eduardo Fernandez, guitar English Chamber Orchestra, George Malcolm, conductor this is pretty as all get out.
