Vivaldi's life From this distance, Vivaldi’s music is more interesting than the story
of his life. Perhaps we know more about his music and perhaps there is
more to discover about his life. There is no story of family and
struggles with employers for advancement like Bach or of restless
ambition like Mozart or hyperactive entrepreneurialism like Handel.
Vivaldi had one job for much of his life; he never married and did not
travel much outside Italy though for a time his fame as a composer
travelled further than he did. As musical fashions changed, Vivaldi
died a pauper, forgotten in Vienna.
But he did leave about seven hundred and fifty musical works, most of
which only came to light over the past seventy years. Others are
still being found.
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on 4 March 1678 in Venice then a rich,
though declining, republic. His father Giovanni (a barber who became a
violinist) and his mother Camilla had six children in total. It seems
that Giovanni decided that music would be a better career than
barbering for his son so he taught him the violin from a very early
age. It is not clear whether Antonio was encouraged to join the church
because that was the best place for a musician or whether, as some have
suggested, it was a natural occupation for the eldest son of a poor
family.
Vivaldi began his training for the priesthood in 1693 when he was 15
and was ordained in 1703 at 25. His nickname – Il Prete Rosso – is
possibly the most famous nickname of a musician before Jelly Roll
Morton (1890-1941).
In the year he was ordained Vivaldi became a violin teacher at the
orphanage for girls the Ospedale della Pietà. Though a priest,
Vivaldi was exempted from saying Mass on health grounds – he suffered
from asthma – and so he concentrated on his music. The Pietà had an
excellent choir and orchestra, drawn from the girls and young women
living there. Vivaldi taught violin and composed sonatas, concertos and
church music. The public paid for the musical performances but could
not see the singers and players, who were behind the screen.
Juditha Triumphans was
commissioned by the Pietà in 1716 and performed by the girls as an
oratorio. It was commissioned to celebrate a victory of Venice over the
Turks. (Venice, with great help from the Hapsburg Empire, had defended
Corfu but in the subsequent Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 Venice ceded
important territory to Austria. In the end, it was not really an event
to celebrate. The Ottoman Empire was certainly in decline but so was
the Republic of Venice.)
By the second decade of the 18th century, opera had become hugely popular in Italy. Vivaldi composed his first opera Ottone in Villa in 1713 and it was performed in a theatre in Vicenza. It was a moderate success and over the next few years he wrote Orlando Finto Pazzo (1714), Orlando Furiosa (1714) and Arsilda Regina di Ponto (1716) as well as several that have been lost (or perhaps, not yet found).
It 1717 or 1718 Vivaldi left Venice – it seems that he was not
reappointed to the position at the Pietà – and took a position at the
court in Mantua where, one hundred years earlier, Monteverdi had worked
and where he had composed L’Orfeo, Favola in Musica.
He kept a relationship with the Pietà though, and was paid to compose
two concerti a month and to rehearse the orchestra from time to time.
Vivaldi spent three years in Mantua and wrote several operas, including Tio Manlio.
In 1720 the Empress died in Vienna and all theatres in the Empire were
closed. Vivaldi returned to Venice and the Pietà. In 1721 he was in
Milan and in 1722 in Rome. Operas were produced in both these cities
but they have been lost. In 1725 in Amsterdam a collection of twelve
concerti by Vivaldi, his Opus 8, was published under the title Il cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione. The first four works in the collection were The Four Seasons, which have become, probably, the best known and most played compositions in the classical repertoire.
In 1725 also, a contralto from Mantua named Anna Giraud (“Giro” in
Italian – she was originally French) became a pupil of Vivaldi in
Venice. Attempts have been made to suggest that Vivaldi broke his
priestly vows and continued an unchaste relationship with Mme. Giraud
for 14 years. However, there is no evidence for this.
By this time Vivaldi was at the height of his powers and fame. He wrote
a cantata for the wedding in 1725 of Louis XV of France to the Polish
Princess Maria. A second set of concerti, La Centra Opus 9, was
dedicated to Emperor Charles VI. (Charles had been brought up in Spain
and on his return to Vienna set up the Spanish Riding School. He also
played the harpsichord, apparently rather well).
In 1730 Vivaldi was in Vienna and Prague, where the opera Farnace
was produced. Vienna was as lively a musical city as it is now: it had
a Venetian opera company that, between 1724 and 1734, presented sixty
operas. Not a lot is known about Vivaldi’s life during the 1730s. He
was certainly prolific, concentrating mostly on opera, and he visited
Mantua, Verona and Amsterdam. We do know that in 1735 the opera Griselda
was performed in Venice’s Teatro San Samuele, from which Vivaldi had up
until then been excluded. A libretto by Apostolo Zeno on the folk story
of Griselda written about
1700 had been the basis of about thirty operas, including works by
Albinoni and Scarlatti. For Vivaldi’s work Carlo Goldoni revised
the Zeno libretto and Anna Giraud sang the title role. (There is a
lovely recording of Griselda recently released in the Naïve Vivaldi
Edition, with a particularly beautiful piece of cover art.)
It seems that Vivaldi’s popularity weakened in the late 1730s and,
certainly, Venice was losing its prosperity. Vivaldi struggled to make
money from his operas. The interest of Charles VI in Vivaldi’s music
made Vienna attractive and Vivaldi went there in May 1740, apparently
accompanied by Anna Giraud. However in October the Emperor died from
eating a meal of Amanita Phalloides (as, it is suggested, had Emperor
Claudius of Rome). The Emperor had left no male heir. This lead to the
War of Austrian Succession and Voltaire’s remark “ce plat de
champignons changea la destinee de l’Europe” (a comment which, perhaps
understandably, we have never seen on a restaurant menu). Vivaldi and
opera were not first priority for Charles’s daughter Maria Theresa so
Vivaldi’s career did not flourish. He continued to sell manuscripts to
support himself but, it seems, composed nothing new while in Vienna.
In July 1741 Vivaldi died of innerlicher brand,
literally “internal fire”. He was buried as a pauper in the Hospital
Cemetery (now site of Hotel Sacher) and (perhaps) nine year-old Joseph
Haydn sang in the funeral service in Stephansdom, which was, as well as
being the Cathedral, was the local parish church
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