Antonio Vivaldi

he composer, who was born in Venice in 1678 and died in Vienna in 1741, received violin lessons from his father and was ordained a priest in 1703. From 1703, he taught violin at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls that provided excellent musical training for those brought up there. His first opera, Ottone in villa, was performed in Vicenza in 1713; his first opera written for Venice, Orlando finto pazzo, in 1714. For the opera Griselda (1735), he collaborated with the playwright Carlo Goldoni as librettist.
In 1741 he decided to leave Venice and go to Vienna, presumably in search of a position at court, but he died there and was buried in a pauper's grave. One of Vivaldi's contemporaries who held him in high esteem was Johann Sebastian Bach, who transcribed ten of Vivaldi's concerti for harpsichord and organ. Like Bach's music, Vivaldi's music was forgotten for a long time, but it was rediscovered in the 20th century. Initially, Vivaldi was mainly recognised as a composer of instrumental music, as evidenced by the Europe-wide distribution of the collections L'estro armonico op. 3 (1711), La stravaganza op. 4 (around 1714), Il cimento dell‘ armonia e dell’ inventione (1725) and La cetra op. 9 (1727). Today, Vivaldi's achievements as a composer of operas and sacred music (such as the Gloria RV 589 or the oratorio Juditha Triumphans from 1716) are also fully recognised.

Vivaldi's music has inspired choreographers such as George Balanchine (Square Dance, 1957), John Cranko (L'estro armonico, 1963), Gerald Arpino (Viva Vivaldi !, 1965), Jorma Elo (Slice to Sharp, 2006) and Thierry Malandain (Estro, 2014); his cycle of violin concertos from op. 8 with the nickname Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons) has received particular attention. This was choreographed in the original version by Martin Schläpfer in Bern in 1999, among others, and in its adaptation by Max Richter by Wayne McGregor (Kairos, 2014) and Crystal Pite (The Seasons' Canon 2016), among others. Kairos was performed by the Bayerisches Staatsballett in 2018 as part of Portrait Wayne McGregor.