ANTONIO VIVALDI 1678-1741CONCERTO PER LA SIG.RA ANNA MARIAfor violin, strings and basso continuo in B minor (RV 387)Source: Conservatorio Benedetto Marce. Save for a few solo works (the lovely Fulgenso Perotti Grave for violin and organ, which could have been from a Bach Passion; and the Vivaldi-like Porpora Sinfonia for Two Violins and Continuo), this was all ensemble work. Biondi had arranged several of the works, and he served as typical 18th Century concertmaster, setting the tempo. Vivaldi's Virgins is a sparkling historical fiction about Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the orphans trained to perform music for the well-fare of the souls of Venice in the 1700's.
While recently speaking to the Dante Society in Santa Cruz about remarkable Venetian women, we veered for quite a while onto the topic of Anna Maria dal Violin and the musicians of the Piéta. I realized I had not shared this video here on my blog, so this seems like a good time to rectify that! Ann Maria was one of the remarkable women musicians at the Ospedale Santa Maria della Piéta, which took in orphans and gave them a musical education. Anna Maria became the special student of Antonio Vivaldi.
Thank you to the receptionist who was selling tickets for the concerts given in the church on the day I visited last. He was kind enough to allow me past the barrier for a couple minutes so I could give you this glimpse of the interior.
When Anna Maria began her musical instruction as a child here at the orphanage, this actual church had not yet been built. But it was completed during her lifetime, and it is believed, by researcher Mickey White, that Anna Maria is buried beneath the stone of the church along with her musical sisters.
The original church. Notice the small door on the left side. It was known as the scaffetta, where babies were left for the nuns to pick up anonymously.
If anyone knows anything about the wonderful baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, beyond his 'Red Priest' nickname, it is that he composed many of his pieces for an orchestra composed of orphaned girls in Venice.
Author Barbara Quick illuminates that long-ago world for readers, along with life in Venice in the early 1700s, with her historical novel, 'Vivaldi's Virgins' (HarperCollins, 284 pages, $24.95).
Readers peer into this world through the eyes of an orphan who has awakened into life at the Ospedale della Pieta orphanage without knowing who her parents are.
Quick deftly allows readers to learn her circumstances and her interior thoughts through letters that Anna Maria dal Violin is ordered, by the stern nuns, to write to her unknown mother. Quick's epistolary approach also informs that Anna Maria has developed into an outstanding violinist, despite her disciplinary run-ins with the nuns.
Anna Maria's talent gives her more access to the composer Vivaldi than other girls at the orphanage. Through these glimpses, readers can surmise that Vivaldi was hardworking, ambitious and a bit vainglorious as a priest and composer.
Anna Maria Dal Violin Music
Anna Maria existed historically as surely as Vivaldi did; her records were among those recovered from the Pieta. Quick's narrative darts in time between her youth and middle age, sometimes bridged by the phase: 'If I knew then what I know now.'
Anna Maria Dal Violin
The tension in the novel rises from Anna Maria's quest to learn who she is. Anna Maria is often punished by her attempts to go beyond the orphanage's bounds as a young teen, both to see the outside lush world of Venice and to find clues about her origin.
Eventually, Anna Maria learns truths not only about herself but also about other characters, including another Anna, a singer who became close to the middle-age Vivaldi. Many historians believe the second Anna was Vivaldi's paramour, but Quick inserts a different theory.
Readers will also see other composers, including Handel and Scarlatti, in the context of the era.
Quick, however, allows the character of Venice itself to dominate the novel more than Vivaldi's music. Vivaldi aficionados will be disappointed that hardly any of Vivaldi's specific works are mentioned.