Il Teatro Sant’Angelo al tempo di Vivaldi (1700-1740)
Applications deadline June 1st 2023
For info segreteria.vivaldi@cini.it
Istituto: Antonio Vivaldi Institute
International Conference Il Teatro Sant’Angelo al tempo di Vivaldi (1700-1740)
The International conference is organised by the Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute, the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi’s research group ‘La drammaturgia musicale a Venezia (1678-1792)’ and the research group ‘WoVen’, University of Science and Technology of Norway – NTNU.
The subject of the study will be the way in which, between 1700 and 1740, the programming of the Sant’Angelo Theatre explored various declinations of musical dramaturgy, in decades of transition and coexistence between seventeenth-century models, Zeno’s reformed drama and the new acquisitions of Neapolitan opera. An entire session will be devoted to Vivaldi’s activity at the Sant’Angelo as impresario (1712–16; 1725–27), specifically investigating his programming choices, his strategies for
planning theatre seasons, his interventions in the scores to be performed – both his own and others’ – as well as his contribution to the production of pasticci operas.
The study days of 16 and 18 November will be held at the FondazioneLevi, while the day of 17 November, dedicated to Vivaldi, will be held at the Fondazione Cini, and will conclude with a concert by the students of the Accademia Vivaldi who will perform a selection of arias written for the Teatro Sant’Angelo under the management of Vivaldi.
New Scholarships of the Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute
The Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi organizes six meetings on the performance practice of the compositions by Antonio Vivaldi, dedicated to young singers (max 39 years) and players. Each meeting will take place at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice. Masterclasses will begin at 2.00 pm on the first day and end at 1.00 pm on the last day.
Teachers are Gemma Bertagnolli, Veronica Cangemi, Sergio Foresti e Antonio Frigé. In cooperation with Fondazione Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation, lectures by musicologists from the research group La drammaturgia musicale a Venezia (1678-1792) are scheduled at each meeting.
Deadlines for presentation of requests: 13 February, 21 April, 12 June, 18 September and 16 October.
Accademia Vivaldi “Advanced Workshops on Performing the Music of Antonio Vivaldi”
In 2023, the advanced courses on the performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s music will continue in six encounters lasting three–four days each. Prior to the start of the courses, there will be an appointment, held by Federico Maria Sardelli, entitled “Interpreting Vivaldi from his manuscripts”, providing an introduction to the subsequent courses, aimed at instrumentalists, singers, conductors and musicologists who wish to deepen their understanding of the performance practices of Vivaldi’s music through the study of his manuscripts and the many interpretative notes to be found therein. More than any of his contemporaries, Vivaldi is the composer who littered his scores with invaluable indications for the performer. Gathering them from all his manuscripts, learning how to interpret them and contextualise them, offers a great help to performance practices, providing answers to many questions and allowing us to correct numerous errors and misunderstandings of our times.
Over the course of the year, there will be five appointments dedicated to singing (sacred vocal music, secular vocal music and musical dramas), held by Gemma Bertagnolli, Veronica Cangemi and Sergio Foresti, and one appointment dedicated to the basso continuo, held by Antonio Frigé.
Performing Vivaldi on the basis of his manuscripts. Seminar with Federico Maria Sardelli
The Italian Antonio Vivaldi Institute proposes a series of seminars aimed at instrumentalists, singers, conductors and musicologists who wish to study the performance practices of Vivaldi’s music in depth. The encounters focus on the study of his original manuscripts and the many performance indications contained therein.
On Tuesday 14 February at the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, Federico Maria Sardelli’s book Il volto di Vivaldi will be presented.
Antonio Vivaldi «Vivaldi Album»
The Vivaldi Album is a series of operatic aria anthologies subdivided by vocal register, drawn from Antonio Vivaldi’s surviving musical works for theatre. Its sources include twenty-four musical dramas, three serenades and numerous individual arias. Each volume is made up of twelve pieces which vary in terms of affect and character, illustrating a wide range of styles and dramatic situations. They are arranged in chronological order so as to provide an optimal cross-section of Vivaldi’s entire career. The twelve arias included in each volume, drawn from an equal num-ber of operas, covering a chronological span lasting about a quarter of a century: from his beginnings in Vicenza (1713) to his more mature works performed at the end of the 1730s. In addition to their variety and great intrinsic musical value, the titles brought together in this volume were chosen because they represent an ideal cross-section of Vivaldi’s entire dramatic production. In fact, there are some works dating from the early phases of his career, linked, above all, to his collaboration with the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice, while several works date from his middle period, the fruits of a series of commissions received from some of the most important Italian courts of the era (Mantua, Florence, Milan and Rome). Finally, other works are drawn from the culminating phase of his career, when the arrival of Neapolitan musicians in the north of the peninsula, especially Venice, forced him to extend his professional activities to the surrounding Venetian mainland.
Only a few of the arias in this anthology have come down to us in a complete, or close to complete form. In fact, most of them are characterised by their more or less unfinished state, or have only survived in sketch form, as remnants of largely lost works or, in some cases, as part of projects that were planned but never realised.
Books at San Giorgio
The series of book presentations showcasing the latest Fondazione Giorgio Cini publications starts up again on 18 October with Patterns of Change in the Traditional Music of Southeast Asia, the tenth volume in the series “Intersezioni Musicali” published by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies in collaboration with the publisher Nota (Udine). Edited by the director of the Institute, Giovanni Giuriati, the book brings together seven chapters each with original research work on Southeast Asian music conducted in the field.
On 11 November, at 5 pm, the four volumes of Vivaldi Album, all edited by Alessandro Borin, will be presented by Alessandro Borin and Ivano Bettin, with the participation of Francesco Fanna
The four volumes are a series of anthologies of opera arias, subdivided by vocal register, taken from the corpus of Antonio Vivaldi’s surviving music for theatre. Each volume is made up of twelve pieces which vary in terms of affect and character, illustrating a wide range of styles and dramatic situations and arranged in chronological order so as to provide a representative selection from Vivaldi’s entire career. To be held during the Accademia Vivaldi workshops (8-12 November), led by soprano Gemma Bertagnolli, the presentation will be followed by a concert of the Accademia students, who will perform some arias from the four anthologies.
On 29 November, at 5 pm, the last featured book will be Panj ganj (I cinque tesori) di Neẓāmi Ganjavi della Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Il restauro di un capolavoro della miniatura persiana del XVII secolo, edited by Daniela Meneghini and Alessandro Martoni (Casa Editrice Mandragora, Florence, 2022). The event will be presented by Elisabetta Raffo.
Published as part of the “Save a Codex” project promoted by Nova Charta Editori and its director Vittoria de Buzzaccarini and financed by Giovanni Alliata di Montereale, this monograph describes the restoration of one of the finest illuminated manuscripts in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini library: the Panj ganj (The Five Treasures), or Ḵhamseh (Quintology) by Neẓāmi Ganjavi (1141-1209). A masterpiece by a great classical Persian poet, the manuscript was donated by Vittorio Cini in 1967, following a trip to Iran for the Cini miniatures exhibition at the Golestan Palace, Tehran.
Accademia Vivaldi Advanced Workshops on Performing the Music of Antonio Vivaldi
The Accademia Vivaldi courses will continue in the autumn with more in-depth workshops on performance practice for Antonio Vivaldi’s compositions, addressed to young singers and instrumentalists. The last two workshops will be for singers and led by soprano Gemma Bertagnolli. The ten selected students, who won scholarships, will be given the opportunity not only to work on their interpretation but also to explore the musicological aspect of the pieces performed, thanks to lectures by musicologists who collaborate with the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and the research group dedicated to “ Musical Theatre in Venice (1678-1792)“ at the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi.
The students will give a concert at the end of each of the two workshops, the first at the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi and the second at the Squero Auditorium
«Studi vivaldiani» 21
- Annual journal of the Istituto Italiano Antonio VivaldiFondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 2021
- Fabrizio Ammetto – Luis Miguel Pinzón Acosta, Taking Lessons from the Red Priest: Vivaldi’s Corrections in the Violin. Concerto Mus.2421-O-14 by Pisendel
- Michael Talbot, By Vivaldi (After All): The Violin Concerto RV Anh. 131
- Fabrizio Ammetto, Postscript to the Reconstruction of BWV 1052R byJ. S. Bach in Reply to the Review by Jude Ziliak in “Early Music Performer”
- Miscellany (Compiled by M. Talbot)
- Discographie Vivaldi 2020-2021 (by R.‐C. Travers)
Accademia Vivaldi Advanced Workshops on Performing the Music of Antonio Vivaldi
The Accademia Vivaldi advanced courses will continue in 2022 with five workshops for singers and instrumentalists on performing practice of Vivaldi’s compositions. The courses will be devoted to singing (sacred vocal music, vocal chamber music, and dramas for music with a special focus on Griselda in the June workshop) and performing basso continuo. A maximum of ten selected students will be admitted to the workshops through a call for applications. The students will have the opportunity to work on performing technique but also to further their knowledge of the musicological aspects of the chosen compositions, thanks to lessons to be given by the musicologists who edit the Vivaldi Institute’s critical editions. There will be a public concert at the end of each workshop.
