VIFF Review: Antonio Vivaldi: A Prince of Venice

The obvious comparison for this French produced biography of the life of Baroque composer Vivaldi is the movie Amadeus. Both are visually, and musically lavish accounts of great classical composers, but they differ significantly in their dramatic structure. While Mozart's story is told in a traditional movie fashion, Vivaldi's story is composed in a series of vignettes of events in his life. It doesn't have the dramatic impact, and emotional involvement of Amadeus, but serves its purpose in detailing Vivaldi's life. It's more PBS docu-drama than Hollywood bio-pic, which I guess is why it was classified in the non-fiction category. It's also sometimes a little disorienting to be reading English subtitles for French dialog of Italian conversations.

Visually, the film is splendid. 18th century Venice is convincingly conjured up with historic locations, detailed sets, and period costumes.

Musically, the soundtrack is sumptuous. It would be impossible to include more than a small selection of his prodigious output. The brief exerpts are enough to pique my curiosity and seek out more of his music.

As a priest in the Catholic Church his musical talent was put to limited use as he was appointed as violin master of the La Prietà orphanage. His Church superiors did not seem to appreciate his musical talent outside teaching his pupils, and composing sacred music for the Church. He was discouraged from writing secular pieces, and it was scandalous to the Bishop that he would write operas. They seemed to consider non-sacred music–especially opera–a distraction to the masses from religion.

There was more than a little jealousy on his peers part as this simple priest was feted by the nobility. Despite the intrigues set against him and his own poor health, he composed and performed in all the great cities of Europe to people like Emperor Charles VI of Austria.

The depiction of Vivaldi's character is somewhat enigmatic. He is obsessed by music, and has little interest in anything else, not even romantic attachments. The life long relationship with his favorite singer Anna Giro is depicted as chaste. Perhaps his priestly vows allowed him the space to romance his muse instead.

Knowing little about Vivaldi beforehand–other than his Four Seasons–it was surprising to learn that he lapsed into obscurity in the 19th century, and was not rediscovered until 1927 when some of his manuscripts were discovered. The modern popularity of his music didn't happen until the 1950s when his music was finally recorded. This film puts the Red Priest of Venice into his place in musical history.