The juicy parts of Vivaldi's life are ripe for melodrama. His refusal to say mass, his travels with two sisters, his professional life as head music teacher at an all girls orphanage, his bankruptcy in the opera business, his near excommunication from the church, his death as a pauper, and his almost complete obscurity until this century are all elements of a Hollywood exposé. Unfortunately, none of the
biographies give much weight to these tidbits, and his apparent sexual liaisons
under the circumstances are nothing to write home about (if one writes home about such things.) The truth about Vivaldi is that he was a priest, a composer, he played violin, and he loved music.

While most biographies are told chronologically, I always find it laborious to delve into a person's childhood when what I really want to know is the dirt. Therefore I have saved the family/childhood stuff for last, and I begin with what matters most...

VIVALDI THE LOVER
Very little is known about Vivaldi's personal life.  We know about his professional
career through the records of the places his music was performed.  We know what
people thought of Vivaldi from letters they wrote praising or denouncing him.  What we know from Vivaldi's own mouth (or hand) is minimal.  His personal opinions or thoughts are next to impossible to determine, as are the events that have nothing to do with music; romance for instance (only a step away from music.)  Vivaldi did not marry, and it is not known if he had romantic relations of any kind.  This has not prevented musicologists (wishful thinkers that they are) from speculation.

The strongest case is made for his  star opera soprano Anna Girò, or Anna Giraud, who played the lead in his operas starting with Farnace.  She was 16 or 17 years old and Vivaldi was already 48 when they met.  She and her sister Paolina lived at Vivaldi's house and became his traveling partners, accompanying him on his excursions all over Europe for many years.  Vivaldi claimed the sisters provided much needed health care for the ailing composer, whose asthma severly hindered his priestly duties (without, apparently, affecting his abilities to travel, perform, teach, compose prolifically, or manage an opera house.)    It is no wonder that historians were putting two and two together to make love.

The first attacks against Vivaldi's lifestyle came in 1737, when Guido Bentivoglio
refused to allow Vivaldi to stage an opera in the city of Ferrara.  He claimed that
Vivaldi was unfit for such high an honor because he did not say mass (which was
true) and that he was having an affair with Anna (which was hearsay.)  Vivaldi
protested in a long rambling letter which is the only hard evidence we have of
Vivaldi's involvement with the singer.  He denied the accusations, of course.
(Vivaldi eventually got an opera into Ferrara, but is was a commercial failure.)

Whether Vivaldi was intimate with Anna does not deter from their interesting
relationship.  He was more than likely a father-figure and mentor, and she a pupil
and close friend.  Their travels may have been strictly business, or Vivaldi may have acted as her chaperone.  She was not regarded as an outstanding singer or object of beauty, but she was known to be a convincing actor with a strong presence, and she received several compliments and denouncements in surviving accounts.  She was married seven years after Vivaldi's death.  We more than likely will never know exact details of their alliance, which means the historians (and I) are free to speculate.

VIVALDI THE TEACHER
At the age of 25 Antonio accepted what to any 25 year old male today would be a
dream job.  He became the music teacher at an all girls orphanage called the
Ospedale delle Pieta (the Hospital of Pity or Compassion.)  There were four such
schools in Venice.  It was his job to teach the young girls to play music and write
two concertos every month for them to perform.  This accounts for the variety of
instruments Vivaldi wrote for, since he had to showcase each of the young girl's
talents.  Judging from the difficulty of the music, these girls, all of them under
twenty, possessed considerable talent.  Vivaldi must have enjoyed this work since
he stayed at the Ospedale off and on for thirty-five years, although his interests in opera and travel constantly drew him away.  If it sounds like paradise for a hot,
young maestro, take into account this account by Rousseau:

"Vespers...are performed in barred-off galleries solely by girls, of whom the
    oldest is not twenty years of age.  I can conceive of nothing as voluptuous, as
    moving as this music. What grieved me was these accursed grills, which
    allowed only tones to go through and concealed the angels of lovliness of whom
    they were worthy.  I talked of nothing else.  One day I was speaking of it at M. le   Blond's.  "If you are so curious," he said to me, "to see these little girls, I can
    easily satisfy you.  I am one of the administrators of the house, and I invite you
    to take a snack with them."  When going into the room that contained these
    coveted beauties, I felt a tremor of love such as I never experienced before.  M. le Blond introduced me to one after another of those famous singers whose
    voices and names were all that were known to me.  "Come, Sophie," -- she was
    horrible.  "Come, Cattina," -- she was blind in one eye.  "Come, Bettina," -- the smallpox had disfigured her.  Scarcely one was without some considerable
    blemish.  Two or three, however looked tolerable; they sang only in the
    choruses.  I was desolate.  During the snack, when we teased them, they made
    merry.  Ugliness does not exclude charms, and I found some in them.  Finally,
    my way of looking at them changed so much that I left nearly in love with all
    these ugly girls."

One very odd element to the performances of these girls was that the audience
couldn't see the performers.  Screens divided the viewer from the orchestra, the
strange religious purpose of which I can only guess at.  I'm certain, however, that
everyone in the audience returned home believing the orchestra was made up of
only the most heavenly beauties imaginable, since their only mental image was that provided by the music being played.

Not all of the girls at the orphanage were orphans.  Many of the girls were poor or illegitimate, and some were just unruly types for which the Ospedale was their
"reform school".  Graduation meant a dowry for each girl, which was to be used for a husband or a nunnery.  As Vivaldi grew in popularity, so did the fame of his
all-female orchestra.  The Ospedale's soon became more popular than the churches (though not as popular as the operas.)  Even the pupils made names for themselves, especially the vocalists.  Many of Venice's elite began to send their daughters to the school to study music.  It is said that many noblemen justified this by reasoning their legitimate daughters should get the same quality education as their illegitimate ones.  The girls performed in groups of up to forty players and performed every Saturday, Sunday, and on holidays.

The Ospedale review board had to renew Vivaldi's position every year.  His initial
employment at the school lasted six years before he was voted out in 1709.  There was nothing scandalous behind this.  It has been said that the board was upset with his continued refusal to say mass.  He had apparently been afflicted with asthma since birth, which made the long religious ceremony difficult for him and he had to step down from the pulpit several times before calling it quits.  Vivaldi had also been pursuing several outside interests at the time and probably was ready to live outside of Venice for a while.    Another possible reason for his dismissal was that the fame he had earned at the Ospedale also promised to earn him a lot of money.
Vivaldi may have wanted to split his interests (they permitted him an occasional
leave of absence for travel) and the Ospedale wanted a full time worker, so they let him go.  Proof that there was no ill will shows in the fact that they whole-heartedly accepted him back when he returned to Venice in 1711 at 60 ducats a year, and they allowed him to devote his time to other projects.

Vivaldi was not the only music teacher at the school.  There were others that
specialized in different instruments and since Vivaldi wrote for so many, it seems
likely they gave Vivaldi advice on the specifics of each one.  It is known that Ludwig Erdman and Ignaz Siber taught at the school, both German experts on the oboe.
Siber was hired again as an expert on the transverse flute, a new instrument at the time.

Outside of the school there were several musical Venetians, among them the
famous Tomaso Albinoni, seven years Vivaldi's senior, who was especially
influential in Vivaldi's opus 4, La Stravaganza.  Archangelo Corelli of Rome also
influenced Vivaldi greatly.  25 years older than Vivaldi, he was a well established
composer in Roman circles. Other influences have been attributed to  Giuseppe
Valentini, three years younger than Vivaldi and working in Rome.

VIVALDI THE PRIEST
Vivaldi was known as the "Red Priest" because of his red hair (inherited from his
father.)  He became a priest before he became a composer, but it is obvious that his heart, mind, and soul were completely devoted to music.   He refused to say mass after a year the Ospedale, claiming his health wouldn't permit it.  Asthma made it difficult for him to say mass every day.  This point is commonly made to indicate he was using it as a scapegoat to avoid an activity he abhorred.  This is probably not the case, although it is obvious where his interests were strongest.  It is likely he didn't compose any religious music until he had been with the Ospedale for ten years (but he is not entirely to blame for this.  The Ospedale had a sacred composer already, Gasparini, but his post was vacant for six years before Vivaldi took it up.)
It was probably this lack of interest rather than his outside activities (traveling with wife and mistress, composing operas) that led to his near ex-communication.  It was a circumstance of the time that if you wanted to compose or play music it helped to become part of the religious institution.  As a priest Vivaldi was free to devote his time to writing and playing.  He took the position at the Ospedale the same year he was ordained, 1703, so it was obvious he was using the church to attain the position.  This is not as immoral as it sounds, since many priests had private vocations.  There were thousands of priests in Venice.  The priesthood was more of a religious education than a way of life.  The Italian church must have been a fairly liberal bunch, because I have never heard of anyone interfering with Vivaldi's composing, progressive and inventive as it was.  No doubt the committee understood Vivaldi's importance and influence, and allowed him exercise free reign over musical matters.

At this point you may want to read an eyewitness account of St. Mark's Cathdral,
the pride of Venice.

VIVALDI THE TRAVELER
Italy at the time was a collection of city-states.  Each city was ruled according to its own laws, and acted independent of the nation as a whole.  Venice was as popular and prosperous a city as it is today, more so in fact.  In the seventeenth century, it had begun to lose a lot of its military holdings to the Ottoman Empire, as well as its trade with the orient and far east.  Seeking new ways to sustain itself, it focused on elaborate festivals held every year around Christmas.  It became a prime destination for travelers all over Europe (what better way to spend your winter than in the warmer climes of Italy?) and Vivaldi's Ospedale orchestra was one of the prime attractions, as was the father/son virtuoso duo--Giovanni and Antonio Vivaldi.
It is no wonder that so much of Vivaldi's music is intended as entertainment rather than personal reflections or holy inspirations.  Venice was a tourist mecca.  Another city in Italy was probably an even larger center for music and art, the city of Rome.
The home of several great composers, the style of music there differed in some
ways from the music of Venice.  Rome attracted visitors from as far away as
Sweden (Queen Christina was a pupil of Corelli's.)

While Vivaldi spent much of his time teaching at the Ospedale, he began to travel as his fame grew.  Certainly meeting musicians and tourists from all over the continent helped spur his enthusiasm for foreign lands, as well was the possibility of raking in the ducats!  He left Venice for three years to live in Mantua and work in service of the governor Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt.  His official title was nothing less flowery than Maestro di Cappella da Camera.  When he returned to Venice he took up a sort of part-time employment with the Ospedale, writing two concertos a month without having to direct each performance.  This gave him room to travel as he wished.  He went to Rome, Bohemia, Amsterdam, and Dresden. Johann Sebastian Bach, ten years Vivaldi's junior, was never to meet the Italian composer (Venice was too far to walk) but he was impressed with L'Estro Armonico, Opus 3, and transcribed six of the concertos to instruments Vivaldi never wrote for, the harpsichord and organ (Vivaldi used these instruments to provide a rhythmic baseline, not as the lead solo as Bach did-- the difference between a keyboardist and a violinist.)  It is odd they never met up during Vivaldi's travels, since L'Estro Armonico was fairly early in Vivaldi's career.  I guess Bach's children kept him too busy for wandering Italian composers.

His travels were partly a desperate search for work.  Vivaldi was not poor by any
means, for he was at one time worth 50,000 ducats a year, but as he got older he
invested most of this money into the opera business and lost it.  To further
aggravate matters, the people of Venice had become accustomed to his music and
his popularity was starting to wane.  There were only two ways to make money as a composer, either by appointment to a court, church, or similar position, or by the
sale of a published work.  Often the appointment was paid on a per work basis, so
the only way to make money was to keep writing music.  He sought appointment in Paris and Vienna with no luck.  As he traveled he took with him a collection of
concertos and other works which he sold in various cities.  Another way to make
money was through dedications.  Very often composers were commissioned to
write works by whatever wealthy patron happened to need them.  Sometimes,
however, music could be dedicated to someone the composer hoped would favor
the music, expecting a return on their investment in the form of expensive
presents.  This was the riskiest proposition, since the cost of writing and publishing was entirely up to the composer.  Often, the best bet for a profit was to collect a number of works into an opus.   The opus was a highly marketable commodity against a single work, and also a good way to include older unpublished work with new work.  Vivaldi published 12 collections, conveniently titled Opus 1 - 12.

He scored a success in Dresden, where the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel exalted his works before becoming Vivaldi's pupil in Venice.  Pisendel was part of the Dresden court orchestra and used his influence to get Vivaldi's music performed.
Vivaldi wrote several concertos for the orchestra, including the "symphonic"
concertos for many solo instruments (first performed at the Ospedale in 1740.)
These works were designed to highlight the talents of the entire ensemble rather
than individual performers, with tiny solos for each instrument.  The idea of
contrasts appears again with the words "many soloists", a contradictory term
which conjures up images of individual instrument players battling on stage for the solo spot.  In a way, that's what these concertos are.  They were to be some of his final compositions in Venice.  They are a musical curtain call with which Vivaldi departed for Germany and his fate, but listening to these concertos you cannot hear the slightest tint of death.  They are lively, bouncy, and joyous; as optimistic as the music of his youth.  (For what it matters, RV. 558 is my personal favorite of all Vivaldi's works.)

VIVALDI THE CHILD
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on March 4th, 1678.  His father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, was a barber who took up violin, and was apparently good enough to dazzle the basilica of St. Mark (San Marco) since he got a job there performing, and later performed in operas.  It is likely he has not been given enough credit for Antonio's abilities as a musician and composer.  Not only did he teach Antonio to play the violin, but they performed together on several occasions.  Before Antonio's popularity with L'Estro Armonico, the Vivaldi's were a father/son team marked as one of the tourist attractions of Venice.  I have not heard anything as to whether Giovanni performed any of his son's work, or if he composed anything himself.  It is likely he played something and would be an interesting side note if it were known to be so.  Giovanni also hand copied some of Vivaldi's manuscripts, as did three of Vivaldi's nephews.  Vivaldi was part of a large family.  He had four brothers and four sisters.  He was the lone musician.

Vivaldi was a master violinist and continually dazzled the patrons of the Ospedale
with his wild bowing.  A colorful account by the German traveler Johann Friedrich
Armand von Uffenbach sums up Vivaldi's ma stery very well.  "Vivaldi played a solo accompaniment-- splendid-- to which he appended a cadenza which really
frightened me, for such playing has never been nor can be:  he brought his fingers
up to only a straw's distance from the bridge, leaving no room for the bow-- and that on all four strings with imitations and incredible speed."  Vivaldi later met with Uffenbach and without much coercion talked him into buying several concertos
Vivaldi claimed to have written specifically for him.  He accompanied this sale with the offer to teach him to play the concertos (with due compensation) emphasizing his role as teacher and businessman.  After all, selling his music and mastery was his bread and butter.  I do not know if Uffenbach took him up on the offer.

VIVALDI THE UNKNOWN
Antonio Vivaldi died in 1741.  He was far away from home at the time, in Vienna, and as he had spent the wealth of his lifetime, he was buried in a pauper's grave.
Having remained popular across Europe his entire life, he fell out of favor during his last ten years.  As the musical world inched its way towards the classical period, Vivaldi's music was soon forgotten.  His name was barely mentioned for almost two hundred years.

All that remained of the name Vivaldi was in the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach.  Bach had transcribed several concertos from L'Estro Armonico, Op. 3, and Bach scholars were more interested in what he did with the concertos and why he was influenced by them rather than their original forms or original composer.
Vivaldi was unfairly compared to the "baroque master" by those already prejudiced to Bach's music.  The search for Vivaldi's original concertos, however, was the road to one of music history's greatest comebacks.   Widely regarded as an insignificant composer whose existing works were rare to say the least, we now have hundreds of works that put Vivaldi at the fore-front of the baroque period.  The first major discovery was in a music cabinet in Dresden.  Vivaldi had composed a large quantity of music specifically for the Dresden orchestra, and once it had fallen out of fashion (in the 1760's) it had been placed in storage where it collected dust for a century.  The discovery of these works led to the most important historical study of Vivaldi in the 19th century, "Antonio Vivaldi and His Influence on Johann Sebastian Bach"  The author refuted Bach's genius and reduced Vivaldi to an over productive scribbler upon whose soil Bach grew a pleasant flower bed.  There were, however, 83 Vivaldi concertos existing by this time, and this was not the end of the discoveries.

The first historian to take Vivaldi seriously was Arnold Schering in the very early
part of this century.  Since the Vivaldi movement began in Germany with the
Dresden discovery, it was followed by other German historians, such as Albert
Einstein, Karl Straube, Ludwig Landshoff, and Wolfgang Fortner.  The 1920's saw a renewed interest in "old music" that resulted in the first widespread publishing of Vivaldi's work.  You would think that all this growing interest in Vivaldi would lead scholars to Venice in search of Vivaldi's past, but quite the opposite happened. Vivaldi came to them.

In 1926 a monastary in Piedmont was looking to sell part of its archives for some
needed cash.  They were sitting on a huge collection of music, 97 volumes worth,
which they did not know what to do with nor what it was.  They called on an Italian
musicologist, Alberto Gentili, to go through the enormous stash and sort it out.  He happened upon 14 volumes of Vivaldi's music, mostly unknown, including over a hundred concertos, twelve operas, 29 cantatas, and a complete oratorio.  This
music had sat idle for nearly 200 years, and is perhaps one of the greatest
discoveries in musical history.  Seeing that the collection was not a complete one, it led scholars in search of the missing half.  It was discovered in the private
collections of two brothers whose family had handed down volumes of Vivaldi's
music over the past 200 years (unaware, apparently, of its value.)  These collections were bought by the Turin National Library where they reside today.

The rediscovery and Vivaldi's place in music history was cemented with the "Vivaldi Week" celebration in Siena in 1939.  Vivaldi then spread throughout the world following World War II with the establishment of La Scuola Veneziana, I Virtuosi di Roma, and I Musici, three of many orchestras that concentrated on the recording and performing of Vivaldi.  Pincherel became the most important Vivaldi scholar in the 50's and 60's by cataloging his works, a numbering system (designated with a "P") that is still in some use today.  By the 1960's, Vivaldi had regained his fame throughout the world, mainly because of the Four Seasons, the Gloria, and a few other concertos.  What had remained hidden for almost 200 years had been brought back in less than forty.

Vivaldi's future place in the classical world is still being formed.  He gains in
popularity year after year as more of his works are recorded (about 40 new CDs are released each year) and become part of the standard repertoire, and there is an increasing interest in his operas and religious works.  None of his operas have fallen into regular rotation, but The Four Seasons is now perhaps the most recorded work in the classical world, with over 100 different recordings.  Vivaldi has joined hand-in-hand with the period instruments movement; his music helping the performers and the performers helping his music find a wider audience in the past three decades to the point where nearly all baroque music is now recorded on
authentic devices.  His music has been used in films such as The Four Seasons, Kramer vs. Kramer, and After Hours, and can even be found in TV commercials.
The radar says that Vivaldi is still on his way up the musical ladder, and perhaps
one day we will re-evaluate his contribution to western music and find him first and foremost among baroque composers.