During Vivaldi’s time teaching at the Ospedale della Pietà (1703-40), this orphanage developed an international reputation for its concerts, presented exclusively by the young women who were educated there. His Gloria and Four Seasons were among hundreds of works performed for the first time by the orphans of the Pietà.
Around 1720, Agata, a baby born without fingers on her left hand, was passed through the small revolving door (called a scaffetta) in the orphanage’s exterior wall. She went on to become a star student, named as the soprano soloist in manuscript copies of cantatas by Giovanni Porta and Andrea Bernasconi and also mentioned in an anonymous poem about the musicians of the Pietà.
Agata della Pietà also proved herself a gifted composer. Her compositions have remained hidden to this day as fragments in a Venice library. Some three hundred years later, her music will be heard for the first time outside the walls of the Venice orphanage, performed by the Australian Chamber Choir, directed by Douglas Lawrence.
During Agata’s student years, Vivaldi was under contract to write two concertos or cantatas a month for the school to perform. With a busy schedule touring Europe as a successful opera composer, he had relinquished his post as Director of Music in 1718. His new contract stipulated that he must rehearse with the orphans at least five times when in Venice. Agata was one of three orphans of the Pietà known to have become a composer. Like Vivaldi’s Gloria, Agata della Pietà’s Cantata is scored for choir, soloists and orchestra. From the surviving parts for first violin, alto, bass and cello, Elizabeth Anderson has reconstructed the work, reinstating the missing parts for second violin, viola, tenor and soloists.
Alongside the first performance of Agata della Pietà’s Cantata is the first performance of a work by Australian composer, Christine McCombe. Power in Stillness was commissioned by the ACC in 2020 for their European tour, which was cancelled due to COVID.
Melbourne novelist, Christine Balint’s new book, Water Music, won the 2021 Viva la Novella Prize. Drawing on archival research in Venice, Water Music tells the story of a young girl growing up and learning music in a Venetian orphanage. Christine will give a pre-concert talk the book is available on the ACC website and at the box office.
ACC will tour this program – titled Vivaldi’s Gloria...- in regional Victoria and Melbourne from 23rd April to 7th May. The Melbourne on concert on May 7th will also be live streamed and available on demand.
See more and book tickets here
