'Vivaldi's Virgins'
(Reviewed by Terez Rose OCT 26, 2007)
As an orphan, Anna Maria had no last name, but came to be known in Italy as Anna Maria dal Violin. Concerto no.2 in E minor (RV 279) This concerto is part of a larger opus called “La stravaganza” (The Extravagance), which could describe the quintessential Vivaldi sound. When eight-year-old Anna Maria dal Violin comes to the master’s attention, Vivaldi recognizes a like spirit if an as-yet unschooled talent. The following years are spent teaching Anna Maria the exquisite nuances of the violin, her willing spirit a joy to behold in one who so values genius.
In the early eighteenth century, Venice was a bustling, exotic city-state, thriving with trade and art, with no less than four public institutions for the housing and upkeep of the city’s less favored population. The Ospdale della Pietà, an orphanage of sorts for foundling and unwanted children, is the setting, then, for Barbara Quick’s Vivaldi’s Virgins. Anna Maria dal Violin—orphans are given a last name according to their instrument of skill—is plucked from the commun at an early age to join the figlie di coro, an elite group of performers under the direction of maestro Antonio Vivaldi, nicknamed the “Red Priest” for the color of his hair and the vocation he neglects in favor of composing. The virgins in question are his all-female musicians, cloistered within the Pietà’s walls, obscured from public view even when performing.
The story is less about Vivaldi and the violin, however, and more about an adolescent’s search for self, for clues about the mother she never knew. Encouraged by Sister Laura, a cloistered nun and friend, to write letters to this absent mother, Anna Maria pours her questions, thoughts and hopes into missives that punctuate the story and set its poignant tone.
There is a lot to like here: the writing is elegant and flows well; descriptions of Venetian society are detailed and evocative. Music is presented in a light, poetic fashion that will please readers whose classical music tastes run along the lines of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”
Anna Maria, based on a real life violin virtuoso to whom Vivaldi dedicated thirty-seven compositions, is a spirited sort. Sneaking out with a friend to attend an opera; secreted by Vivaldi to a nobleman’s masked ball at his palazzo; escaping to attend a celebration in the Jewish Ghetto—these events bring adventure to her life, but continually land her in trouble. Her ensuing punishments demonstrate well the confining nature of life within the Pietà’s walls and the institutionalized element that defines Anna Maria’s world.
During one such punishment, Anna Maria comments in a letter to her mother that “I’ve come to believe that music is the one companion, the one teacher, the one parent, the one friend who will never abandon me.” In musings such as these, Quick has aptly captured the saving grace of music that serves as a religion of sorts for many of us. For the violin-savvy reader seeking insight into the life and mind of a virtuoso, however, this story dishes up thin fare. We’re told Anna Maria is a violin prodigy, how she works hard in trying to memorize and play Vivaldi’s challenging music. We hear that the coro “played very well,” and that “I played for my teacher, just as skillfully, just as beautifully, as I was able.” But what we’re missing are the details.
An aside here, if I might. The violin is not the piano—you don’t just learn notes, plunk them out with the keys and then spend the rest of the time practicing till the music flows smoothly from your finger. Fretless instruments allow infinite opportunities to subtly vary intonation—both a challenge and an opportunity violinists can spend their entire lives trying to master, necessitating hours of daily scales, arpeggios and etudes before passage work can even begin. A violinist’s relationship with this temperamental instrument is intense and enduring—both the violinist’s best friend and her harshest taskmaster. No player is unaffected by the beauty of the instrument, its glowing surface and shape, much like the body of a woman—surely of note to the lonely, motherless Anna Maria. Greater description and detail here, along these lines, would have gone a long way indeed.
What the reader does get are Anna Maria’s feelings when playing, which are lyrically, if vaguely expressed. “The first movements went beautifully well, with notes yielding, sweetening as my fingers found their hiding places and called them into the air. They followed my bow as if I were the leader of a great army of musician warriors: I made them sing.”
Singing, and the broader subject of music in general, is where Quick seems to hone in more successfully on description. One wonderfully depicted event that demonstrates both music and the ribald pageantry of Venice takes place inside the Teatro Sant’ Angelo, which Anna Maria’s friend has dragged her out to attend. There, they encounter both nobility and working class alike, in silks and rain-soaked woolens respectively, all faces covered by the masks Venetians favored in public during the long season of Carnival. The two girls take seats and observe, gape-mouthed, as the drama plays out, both onstage and off—high entertainment for the reader as well.
Later, the ensuing nighttime gondola ride back to the Pietà allows Anna Maria to revel at more natural wonders: “The sky on a clear night is a living, pulsating thing. The stars are like musical notes turned to light, and, like notes, they shimmer and swell and fade and fall.”
Like these stars, Vivaldi’s Virgins has a vivid, affecting trajectory, swelling perhaps a bit too early, but subsiding elegantly to produce a satisfying, heart-warming read. Recommended for fans of Sarah Dunant’s In the Company of the Courtesan who seek a milder, more sentimental touch, with a dollop of classical music thrown in for sweetness. - Amazon readers rating: from 15 reviews
Read a chapter excerpt from Vivaldi's Virgins at author's website
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Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)
- Northern Edge: A Novel of Survival in Alaska's Arctic (1990)
- Vivaldi's Virgins (July 2007)
Nonfiction:
- Still Friends: Living Happily Ever After…Even If Your Marriage Falls Apart (January 2000)
- Under Her Wing: The Mentors Who Changed Our Lives (April 2000)
- The Commitment Dialogues (with Mathew McKay)
Children's Fiction:
- Even More / Todavia Mas (2004)
Book Marks:
- Official website for Barbara Quick
- Reading Guide for Vivaldi's Virgins
- PopMatters review of Vivaldi's Virgins
- Curled Up review of Vivaldi's Virgins
- SF Gate review of Vivaldi's Virgins
About the Author:
Barbara Quick is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), where she majored in English and French. After a year of travel and free-lancing as a gardener, seamstress, and chef, she was trained as an editor and then became a senior writer for UC Berkeley and the University of California’s statewide administration.
Barbara was a senior writer and editor for the late on-line lifestyle magazine, MyPrimeTime.com, writing a weekly column (still pirated on the Internet) called “The Gender Dialogues.” Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Ms., and the San Francisco Chronicle.
She has lived or spent extensive time traveling in the British Isles, Hungary, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Alaska, and Brazil. A trained dancer and an avid sambista, Barbara rehearses, parades and performs as a member of the corps with the Brazilian dance troupe Aquarela. She can speak, read, and write French and Italian, is fairly functional in German, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese, and can meet and greet in Hungarian.
She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her teenage son Julian, who lives part-time with his dad on a sailboat.
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- 20-03-2020, 09:19
- 2018 | Classical Music | FLAC / APE | CD-Rip
Artist: Midori Seiler, Concerto Koln
Title: La Venezia di Anna Maria
Year Of Release: 2018
Label: Berlin Classics
Genre: Classical
Quality: FLAC (image+.cue,log,scans)
Total Time: 01:22:43
Total Size: 570 Mb
WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist:Title: La Venezia di Anna Maria
Year Of Release: 2018
Label: Berlin Classics
Genre: Classical
Quality: FLAC (image+.cue,log,scans)
Total Time: 01:22:43
Total Size: 570 Mb
WebSite: Album Preview
CD 1
Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in C minor RV 120
1. I. Allegro non molto
2. II. Largo
3. III. Allegro
Violin Concerto in E flat major RV 260 'Per Anna Maria'
4. I. Allegro
5. II. Adagio
6. III. Allegro
Baldassare Galuppi
Concerto a quattro in G minor No.1
7. I. Grave e adagio
![Dal Dal](/uploads/1/1/9/5/119519525/135048379.jpg)
9. III. Allegro
Antonio Vivaldi
Violin Concerto in G major RV 308
10. I. Allegro
11. II. Largo cantabile
12. III. Allegro
CD 2
Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in A major RV 158
1. I. Allegro molto
2. II. Andante molto
3. III. Allegro
Violin Concerto in E major RV 270a 'Il Riposo'
4. I. Allegro
5. II. Andante
6. III. Allegro
Sinfonia in F major RV 140
7. I. Allegro
8. II. Andante
![Lessons Lessons](/uploads/1/1/9/5/119519525/637109685.jpg)
Tomaso Albinoni
Concerto a cinque in B flat major Op.10 No.1
10. I. Allegro
11. II. Adagio
12. III. Allegro
Antonio Vivaldi
Violin Concerto in D minor RV 248 'Per Anna Maria'
13. I. Allegro
14. II. Largo - Presto - Adagio - Presto - Adagio
15. III. Allegro ma non molto
Performers:
Anna Maria Dal Violin Concerto
Midori Seiler, violinConcerto Koln
Her life reads like the classic Baroque success story: brought up motherless in a Venetian orphanage, maturing into an “unparalleled violin virtuosa”, treated as an equal by Antonio Vivaldi: Anna Maria dal Violin. Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln depict the life of this exceptional woman in La Venezia di Anna Maria.
All her life long, Anna Maria (born 1696, died 1782) lived and worked in the Ospedale della Pietà. The Venetian orphanage for girls did more than just offer a home and a refuge to girls abandoned by their mothers. It was a school, a musical conservatory and a tourist attraction at the same time, a flourishing part of the city-state’s economy in which Anna Maria rapidly rose to stardom. Defying conventional expectations, the orphanage provided the springboard and proved the perfect setting for a career otherwise denied a female orphan in 18th-century Italy.
As maestro di concerto of the Ospedale, Antonio Vivaldi took Anna Maria under his wing. Starting out as her mentor and teacher, he eventually wrote over two dozen Concerti per Anna Maria. She for her part brilliantly mastered the violin and a host of other instruments, and was praised as the “veritable embodiment of all that is good and beautiful”, as a creature “ascending into Paradise”. Before long everyone was demanding to hear her and it is largely thanks to her that Vivaldi’s instrumental concertos blossomed as they did. Baroque specialist Midori Seiler and her congenial partners in Concerto Köln offer a virtuoso portrayal of this artistic teamwork between Anna Maria and Vivaldi. This album is the record of a fruitful collaboration: Antonio Vivaldi and Anna Maria – Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln.
Midori Seiler and Anna Maria: as an equally virtuosic female violinist, Midori Seiler is the ideal candidate to challenge and emulate her Baroque predecessor. As a member of Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik, Seiler was a part of the ensemble’s international breakthrough, from 2005 to 2014 directing from the leader’s desk. After a period as Professor at the Salzburg Mozarteum University she returned to Germany in 2017 as Professor at the Franz Liszt College of Music in Weimar. Holder of the Saxon Mozart Prize, she has enjoyed a long partnership with Concerto Köln. The orchestra has been one of the leading ensembles in the field of historical performance practice for more than 30 years, and as EU Cultural Ambassador 2012 is one of North Rhine-Westphalia’s claims to musical fame.
Four of the Concerti per Anna Maria have been selected for this album, together with one concerto each by Vivaldi’s contemporaries Galuppi and Albinoni. On La Venezia di Anna Maria, exceptional readings by Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln shed unique light on Venice as a flourishing centre of the arts at the height of its musical prowess.
All her life long, Anna Maria (born 1696, died 1782) lived and worked in the Ospedale della Pietà. The Venetian orphanage for girls did more than just offer a home and a refuge to girls abandoned by their mothers. It was a school, a musical conservatory and a tourist attraction at the same time, a flourishing part of the city-state’s economy in which Anna Maria rapidly rose to stardom. Defying conventional expectations, the orphanage provided the springboard and proved the perfect setting for a career otherwise denied a female orphan in 18th-century Italy.
As maestro di concerto of the Ospedale, Antonio Vivaldi took Anna Maria under his wing. Starting out as her mentor and teacher, he eventually wrote over two dozen Concerti per Anna Maria. She for her part brilliantly mastered the violin and a host of other instruments, and was praised as the “veritable embodiment of all that is good and beautiful”, as a creature “ascending into Paradise”. Before long everyone was demanding to hear her and it is largely thanks to her that Vivaldi’s instrumental concertos blossomed as they did. Baroque specialist Midori Seiler and her congenial partners in Concerto Köln offer a virtuoso portrayal of this artistic teamwork between Anna Maria and Vivaldi. This album is the record of a fruitful collaboration: Antonio Vivaldi and Anna Maria – Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln.
Midori Seiler and Anna Maria: as an equally virtuosic female violinist, Midori Seiler is the ideal candidate to challenge and emulate her Baroque predecessor. As a member of Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik, Seiler was a part of the ensemble’s international breakthrough, from 2005 to 2014 directing from the leader’s desk. After a period as Professor at the Salzburg Mozarteum University she returned to Germany in 2017 as Professor at the Franz Liszt College of Music in Weimar. Holder of the Saxon Mozart Prize, she has enjoyed a long partnership with Concerto Köln. The orchestra has been one of the leading ensembles in the field of historical performance practice for more than 30 years, and as EU Cultural Ambassador 2012 is one of North Rhine-Westphalia’s claims to musical fame.
Four of the Concerti per Anna Maria have been selected for this album, together with one concerto each by Vivaldi’s contemporaries Galuppi and Albinoni. On La Venezia di Anna Maria, exceptional readings by Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln shed unique light on Venice as a flourishing centre of the arts at the height of its musical prowess.
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Vivaldi La Venezia di Anna Maria Midori Seiler 18 2003.rar - 570.2 MB
Vivaldi La Venezia di Anna Maria Midori Seiler 18 2003.rar - 570.2 MB
Anna Maria Dal Violin Youtube
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