Portrait of Antonio Vivaldi, by François Morellon de la Cave

	"La primavera" (Spring) — Movement 1: Allegro from The Four Seasons A 2000 live performance by Wichita State University Chamber Players.
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Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678 – July 28, 1741),^[1] nicknamed il Prete Rosso ("The Red Priest"), was a baroque composer and Venetian priest, as well as a famous virtuoso violinist, born and raised in the Republic of Venice. The Four Seasons, a series of four violin concerti, is his best-known work and a highly popular baroque piece.

[edit] Biography

[edit] Childhood

The church where Vivaldi's baptism was registered: Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista in Bragora, Sestiere di Castello, Venice.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in Venice, the capital of the Republic of Venice in 1678. He was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, leading it to be believed that his life was somehow in danger. Though not known for certain, the immediate baptism was most likely due to his poor health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. In the trauma of the event, Vivaldi’s mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood.^[2] Vivaldi's official church baptism (at least, the rites that remained other than the actual baptism itself) did not take place until two months later.^[3]

Vivaldi’s parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora.^[4] Vivaldi had five siblings: Margarita Gabriela, Cecilia Maria, Bonaventura Tomaso, Zanetta Anna, and Francesco Gaetano.^[5] Giovanni Battista, a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught him to play violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. He probably taught him at an early age, as evidenced by Vivaldi’s extensive musical knowledge at age 24 when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà.^[6]. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, a sort of trade union for musicians and composers.^[7] The president of the association was Giovanni Legrenzi, the maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Basilica and noted early baroque composer. It is possible that the young Antonio's first lessons in composition were imparted by him. The Luxembourg scholar Walter Kolneder sees in the early liturgical work Laetatus sum (RV Anh 31, written in 1691 at the age of 13) the influence of Legrenzi's style. His father may have been a composer himself: in 1689, an opera titled La Fedeltà sfortunata was composed by a Giovanni Battista Rossi, and this was the name under which Vivaldi's father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia ^[8]("Rossi" for "Red", because of the colour of his hair, a family trait).

Vivaldi had a health problem, probably a form of asthma, which did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, compose or take part in many musical activities. ^[9] It did however stop him from playing wind instruments because of shortness of breath. At the age of 15 in the year of 1693, he began studying to become a priest. ^[10] In 1703, at the age of 25, Vivaldi was ordained a priest and was soon nicknamed il Prete Rosso, "The Red Priest", because of his red hair. ^[11]

Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a reprieve from celebrating the Holy Mass because of his ill health. Vivaldi only said mass as a priest a few times because of his strettezza di petto, or what we interpret to be asthma.^[12] From that point onward, he appears to have withdrawn from active practice, but did remain a priest.

[edit] At the Conservatorio dell'Ospedale della Pietà

In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino (master of violin) at an orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice.^[13] While Vivaldi is most known as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well. The German architect Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach referred to Vivaldi as “the famous composer and violinist” and said that “Vivaldi played a solo accompaniment excellently, and at the conclusion he added a free fantasy [an improvised cadenza] which absolutely astounded me, for it is hardly possible that anyone has ever played, or ever will play, in such a fashion.”^[14]. Vivaldi was only 25 when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà and he composed most of his major works while working there for the next thirty years of his life.^[15] There were four such institutions in Venice; their purpose was to give shelter and education to children who were abandoned, orphaned, or whose families could not support them. They were financed by funds provided by the Republic. ^[16] The boys learned a trade and had to leave at age 15. The girls received a musical education, and the most talented stayed and became members of the Ospedale's renowned orchestra and choir.

Shortly after his appointment, the orphans began to gain appreciation and esteem abroad, too; Vivaldi wrote most of his concertos, cantatas, and sacred music for them. Vivaldi also wrote sacred vocal music, which was mainly written for the Ospedale della Pietà.^[17]. These sacred works, which number over 60, include many different kinds of works, including solo motets and large-scale choral works for soloists, double chorus, and orchestra.^[18]. In 1704, the position of teacher of viola all'inglese was added to his duties as violin instructor.^[19] The position of maestro di coro, which was at one time filled by Vivaldi, required much time and work. He had to compose an oratorio or concerto at every feast and teach the orphans how to play certain instruments and theory.^[20]

His relationship with the board of directors of the Ospedale was often strained. The board had to take a vote every year on whether to keep a teacher. The vote on Vivaldi was seldom unanimous, and in 1709, he lost his job after a 7 against 6 vote. ^[21] After a year as a freelance musician, he was recalled by the Ospedale with a unanimous vote in 1711; clearly the board had realized the importance of his role by then. ^[22] In 1713, he became responsible for the musical activity of the institution. ^[23] Vivaldi was promoted to maestro di' concerti (music director) in 1716. ^[24]

It was during these years that Vivaldi wrote much of his music, including many operas and concerti. In 1705, the first collection (Connor Cassara) of his works was published: his Opus 1 is a collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, still in a conventional style. ^[25] His first printed collection, written in 1705, was published by Giuseppe Sala.^[26] In 1709, a second collection of 12 sonatas for violin & basso continuo appeared (Opus 2). ^[27] The real breakthrough came with his first collection of 12 concerti for one, two, and four violins with strings, L'estro armonico (Opus 3), which was published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger.^[28] L’estro armonico was dedicated to Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany, a musician himself who sponsored many musicians like Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel. Vivaldi probably met him in Venice.^[29] This was a resounding success all over Europe, and was followed in 1714 by La stravaganza (Opus 4), a collection of concerti for solo violin and strings. ^[30] La stravaganza was dedicated to an old violin student of Vivaldi’s, Vettor Dolfin, who was also a Venetian noble.^[31].

In February 1711, Vivaldi and his father went to Brescia, where his setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621) was played as part of a religious festival. The work seems to have been written in haste: the string parts are simple, the music of the first three movements is repeated in the next three, and not all the text is set. However, and in part as a consequence of the forced essentiality of the music, the work reveals musical and emotional depth and is one of his early masterpieces.

In 1718, Vivaldi began to travel. Despite his frequent travels, the Pietà paid him to write two concerti a month for the orchestra and to rehearse with them at least five times when in Venice. The Pietà's records show that he was paid for 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733.

[edit] Opera impresario

First edition of Juditha triumphans^[32]

In the Venice of the early 18th century, opera was the most popular musical entertainment and the most profitable for the composer. There were several theaters competing for the public attention. Vivaldi started his career as opera writer in undertone: his first opera, Ottone in villa (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie theater in Vicenza in 1713. ^[33] The following year, Vivaldi made the jump to Venice and became the impresario of the theater Sant'Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. However, the work did not meet the public's taste, and Vivaldi had to close it after a couple of weeks and replace it with a rerun of a different work already given the previous year. In 1715, he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader, with eleven arias. This time it was a success, and in the late season, Vivaldi planned to give an opera completely of his own hand, Arsilda regina di Ponto (RV 700). However, the state censor blocked the performance, objecting to the plot: the main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man. ^[34] Vivaldi managed to get the opera through censorship the following year, and it was eventually performed to a resounding success.

In this same period of time, the Pietà commissioned several liturgical works. The most important were two oratorios. The first, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, (RV 643) is lost. The second, Juditha triumphans (RV 644), composed in 1716, is one of his sacred masterpieces. It was commissioned to celebrate the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Turks and the recapture of the island of Corfù. All eleven singing parts were performed by girls of the Pietà, both for the female and male characters. Many of the arias included parts by solo instruments—recorders, oboes, clarinets^{[citation needed]}, violas d'amore, and mandolins—that showcased the range of talents of the girls. ^[35]

In the same year, 1716, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, L'incoronazione di Dario (RV 719) and La costanza trionfante degli amori e degli odi (RV 706). The latter was so popular that it was re-edited and represented two years later with the title Artabano re dei Parti (RV 701, lost) and was eventually performed in Prague in 1732. In the following years, Vivaldi wrote several operas that were performed all over Italy.

His modern operatic style caused him some trouble with other more conservative musicians, like Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing him and the modern style of opera. The pamphlet is called Il teatro alla moda, and its cover has a caricature of Vivaldi playing the violin. The Marcello family was the rightful owner of the Sant'Angelo theater, and a long legal battle had been fought with the management for its restitution, without success. The booklet attacks Vivaldi without mentioning him directly. The cover drawing shows a boat (the Sant'Angelo), on the left end of which stands a little angel wearing a priest's hat and playing the violin. It is a caricature of Vivaldi. The obscure writing under the picture mentions nonexistent places and names. In particular, ALDIVIVA is an anagram of A. Vivaldi. In a letter written by Vivaldi to his patron Marchese Bentivoglio, he makes reference to his 94 operas. However, only around 50 operas by Vivaldi have been discovered and no other documentation of the remaining operas exists. Vivaldi could have been exaggerating, but considering his lengthy time in the opera business, it is likely that he wrote 94 operas.^[36] While Vivaldi composed many operas in his time, he never reached the prominence of other great composers like Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Leo, and Baldassare Galuppi, as evidenced by his inability to keep a production running for any period of time in any major opera house.^[37] His most successful operas were La constanza trionfante and Farnace which garnered six revivals each.^[38].

[edit] His middle years

Caricature by P.L.Ghezzi, Rome (1723)

In 1717 or 1718, Vivaldi was offered a new prestigious position as Maestro di Cappella of the court of the prince Phillip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua. ^[39] He moved there for three years and produced several operas, among which was Tito Manlio (RV 738). In 1721, he was in Milan, presenting the pastoral drama La Silvia (RV 734, lost) and again the next year with the oratorio L'adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù (RV 645, also lost). The next big step was a move to Rome in 1722, where his operas introduced the new style and where the new pope Benedict XIII invited Vivaldi to play for him. In 1725, he returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year.

It is also in this period that he wrote the Four Seasons, four violin concertos depicting natural scenes in music. While three of the concerti are of original conception, the first, "Spring", borrows motifs from a Sinfonia in the first act of his opera "Il Giustino", composed at the same time as The Four Seasons. The inspiration for them was probably the countryside around Mantua. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterized), barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties (both from the hunter's and the prey's point of view), frozen landscapes, children ice-skating, and burning fires. Each concerto was associated with a sonnet of Vivaldi's hand, describing the scenes depicted in the music. They were published as the first four of a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, his Opus 8, published in Amsterdam by Le Cène in 1725.

During his time in Mantua Vivaldi became acquainted with an aspiring young singer, Anna Tessieri Giro, who was to become his student, protégée, and favorite prima donna. ^[40] Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, became part of Vivaldi's entourage and regularly accompanied him on his many travels. There was speculation about the nature of Vivaldi's and Giro's relationship, but no evidence to indicate anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration. Although Vivaldi’s relationship with Anna Giro was questioned, he adamantly denies any romantic relationship in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio November 16th, 1737.^[41]

[edit] Late life and death

During the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobles and royalty. The wedding cantata Gloria e Imeneo (RV 687) was written for the marriage of Louis XV. Opus 9, La Cetra, was dedicated to Emperor Charles VI. In 1728, Vivaldi had the chance to meet the Emperor in person when he came to Trieste to oversee the construction of a new port. Charles admired the music of the Red Priest so much that he is said to have spoken more with the composer in that occasion than with his ministers in two years. He gave him the title of knight, a gold medal, and an invitation to come to Vienna. On his part, Vivaldi gave Charles a manuscript copy of La Cetra; this is a set of concerti almost completely different from the one published with the same title as Opus 9. Probably the printing had been delayed and Vivaldi was forced to gather an improvised collection.

Frontispiece of Il teatro alla moda

In 1730, accompanied by his father, he traveled to Vienna and Prague, where his opera Farnace (RV 711) was presented. Some late operas marked the collaboration with two of Italy's major writers of the time. L'Olimpiade and Catone in Utica were written by Pietro Metastasio, the major representative of the Arcadian movement and court poet in Vienna. La Griselda was rewritten by the young Carlo Goldoni from an earlier libretto by Apostolo Zeno.

Vivaldi's life, like those of many composers of the time, ended in financial difficulties. His compositions no longer held the high esteem they once did in Venice; changing musical tastes quickly made them outmoded, and Vivaldi, in response, chose to sell off sizeable numbers of his manuscripts at paltry prices to finance a migration to Vienna. ^[42] The reasons for Vivaldi's departure from Venice are unclear, but it seems likely that he wished to meet Charles VI, who appreciated his compositions (Vivaldi dedicated La Cetra to Charles in 1727), and take up the position of a composer in the Imperial Court. When Vivaldi departed from Venice, he may have stopped in Graz to see Anna Giro before settling in Vienna.^[43]. It is ever more likely that Vivaldi went to Vienna to stage operas, especially as his place of residence was near the Kärntnertortheater. However, shortly after Vivaldi's arrival at Vienna, Charles died. This tragic stroke of bad luck left the composer without royal protection and a source of income. Vivaldi died not long after, on the night between 27 and July 28, 1741 ^[44], of internal infection in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddlemaker. On July 28 he was buried in a simple grave at the Hospital Burial Ground in Vienna. Vivaldi's funeral took place at St. Stephen's Cathedral, where the young Joseph Haydn was then a choir boy. The cost of his funeral included a Kleinglaut, or pauper's peal of bells.^[45] Both contemporary reports and current scholarship support the assertion that Vivaldi died a pauper.^[46] Vivaldi had once earned over 50,000 ducats, but squandered it and died a pauper.^[47]. His burial spot is next to the Karlskirche in Vienna, at the site of the Technical Institute. The house he lived in while in Vienna was torn down. In part of its place there is now the Hotel Sacher. Memorial plaques have been placed at both locations, as well as a Vivaldi star in the Viennese Musikmeile and a monument at the Rooseveltplatz.

We only have three surviving portraits of Vivaldi today: an engraving, an ink sketch, and an oil painting. The engraving, by Francois Morellon La Cave, was made in 1725 and shows Vivaldi holding a sheet of music. The ink sketch was done by Ghezzi in 1723 and only shows Vivaldi’s head and shoulders in profile. The oil painting found in the Liceo Musicale of Bologna gives us the most accurate picture and shows Vivaldi’s red hair under his blonde wig.^[48]

[edit] Style and influence

Vivaldi's music was innovative in its time, breaking a consolidated tradition in schemes; he gave brightness to the formal and the rhythmic structure of the concerto, repeatedly looking for harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes; many of his compositions reflect a flamboyant, and almost playful exuberance.

Vivaldi is considered one of the composers who brought baroque music (with its typical contrast among heavy sonorities) to evolve into a classical style. Johann Sebastian Bach was deeply influenced by Vivaldi's concertos and arias (recalled in his Johannes Passion, Matthäuspassion, and cantatas). Bach transcribed six of Vivaldi's concerti for solo keyboard, three for organ, and one for four harpsichords, strings, and basso continuo (BWV 1065) based upon the concerto for four violins, two violas, cello, and basso continuo (RV 580).

[edit] Posthumous reputation

Unlike many of his contemporaries, whose music is now rarely heard outside of either academic or special-interest settings, Vivaldi enjoys a wide reception and appreciation among modern audiences. His popularity in his own time quickly made him famous in other countries like France, which was at the time very independent concerning its musical taste.

With the passing of the baroque period, Vivaldi remained unknown for his published concerti, and largely ignored, even after the resurgence of interest in Bach, pioneered by Mendelssohn. Even his most famous work, The Four Seasons, was unknown in its original edition.

When, in the early 20th century, Fritz Kreisler passed off his own Vivaldi-styled concerto as an original Vivaldi work, it helped revive Vivaldi's reputation. This impelled the French scholar Marc Pincherle to begin academic work on Vivaldi's oeuvre. The discovery of many Vivaldi manuscripts and their acquisition by the National University of Turin Library (with the generous sponsorship of Roberto Foa and Filippo Giordano, in memory of their sons, respectively, Mauro and Renzo) led to renewed interest in Vivaldi. People such as Marc Pincherle, Mario Rinaldi, Alfredo Casella, Ezra Pound, Olga Rudge, Desmond Chute, Arturo Toscanini, Arnold Schering, and Louis Kaufman were instrumental in the Vivaldi revival of the 20th century. The resurrection of Vivaldi's unpublished works in the 20th century is mostly thanks to the efforts of Alfredo Casella, who in 1939 organised the now historic Vivaldi Week, in which the rediscovered Gloria (RV 589) and l'Olimpiade were first heard again. Since World War II, Vivaldi's compositions have enjoyed almost universal success, and the advent of historically informed performances has only increased his fame. In 1947, the Venetian businessman Antonio Fanna founded the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, with the composer Gian Francesco Malipiero as its artistic director, having the purpose of promoting Vivaldi's music and publishing new editions of his works.

A movie titled Vivaldi, a Prince in Venice was completed in 2005 as an Italian-French coproduction under the direction of Jean-Louis Guillermou, featuring Stefano Dionisi in the title role and Michel Serrault as the bishop of Venice. Another film inspired by the life of the composer was in a preproduction state for several years and has the working title Vivaldi. Filming was scheduled to begin in 2007, but was canceled and tentatively rescheduled for 2009.

Vivaldi's music, together with that of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Corelli, has been included in the theories of Alfred Tomatis on the effects of music on human behaviour and used in music therapy.

[edit] 1926 and 1930 discoveries

As one biography describes it:^[49]

The fate of the Italian composer's legacy is unique. After the Napoleonic wars, it was thought that a large part of Vivaldi's work had been irrevocably lost. However, in the autumn of 1926, after a detectivelike search by researchers, 14 folios of Vivaldi's previously unknown religious and secular works were found in the library of a monastery in Piedmont. Some even- and odd-numbered volumes were missing, and so the search continued. Finally, in October 1930, the missing volumes were found to be with the descendants of the Grand Duke Durazzo, who had acquired the property as early as the eighteenth century.

To its amazement, the world of music was presented with 300 concertos for various instruments and 18 operas, not counting a number of arias and more than 100 vocal-instrumental pieces. Such an impressive list of newly unearthed opuses warranted a re-evaluation of Vivaldi's creativity.

[edit] Recent discoveries

Recently, four sacred vocal works by Vivaldi have been discovered in the Saxon State Library in Dresden. These compositions were improperly attributed to Baldassare Galuppi, a Venetian composer of the early classical period, mostly famous for his choral works.

In the 1750s or 1760s, the Saxon court asked for some sacred works by Galuppi from the Venetian copyist Don Giuseppe Baldan. Baldan included, among authentic works by Galuppi, the four compositions by Vivaldi, passing them off as Galuppi's. He probably obtained the originals from two of Vivaldi's nephews, (Carlo Vivaldi and Daniele Mauro), who worked under him as copyists.

The recognition of Vivaldi's authorship could be made by analyzing style and instrumentation and by recognizing arias from Vivaldi's operas.

The two most recent among these discoveries are two psalm settings of Nisi Dominus (RV 803, in eight movements) and Dixit Dominus (RV 807, in eleven movements), identified in 2003 and 2005, respectively, by the Australian scholar Janice Stockigt.

RV 803 was recorded for the first time in 2005 by the King's Consort under the direction of Robert King.

The world premiere of any part of RV 807 took place on August 9, 2005, at Melba Hall, University of Melbourne ^[50]. It was recorded in full for the first time in 2006 by the Dresdner Instrumental-Concert under the direction of Peter Kopp. Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot called it "arguably the best nonoperatic work from Vivaldi's pen to come to light since... the 1920s".^[51]

Vivaldi's lost 1730 opera Argippo (RV 697) was re-discovered in 2006 by harpsichordist and conductor Ondřej Macek. Macek and his Hofmusici orchestra performed the work at Prague Castle on May 3, 2008, the first performance since 1730.

[edit] Works

Main articles: List of compositions by Antonio Vivaldi and List of operas by Vivaldi.

His compositions include:

• His most famous work is Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons) of 1723 (part of Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione or The Contest between Harmony and Invention). In essence, it resembles an early example of a tone poem, where he attempted to capture all the moods of the four seasons.
• Over 500 other concerti; approximately 350 of these are for solo instrument and strings, and of these about 230 are for violin; the others are for bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, viola d'amore, recorder, lute, and mandolin. Approximately 40 concerti are for two instruments and strings, and approximately 30 are for three or more instruments and strings. (One notable work in this form is the Mandolin Concerto, RV425.)
• 46 operas
• sinfonias
• Approximately 90 sonatas
• chamber music (though some sonatas for flute, as Il Pastor Fido, have been erroneously attributed to him, but were composed by Chédeville).
• sacred music

See also: Category:Compositions by Antonio Vivaldi

[edit] Media

[edit] Notes

[edit] References and further reading

• Bukofzer, Manfred (1947). Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-09745-5.
• Cross, Eric (1984). Review of I libretti vivaldiani: recensione e collazione dei testimoni a stampa by Anna Laura Bellina; Bruno Brizi; Maria Grazia Pensa in Music & Letters, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 62-64
• Formichetti, Gianfranco Venezia e il prete col violino. Vita di Antonio Vivaldi, Bompiani (2006), ISBN 88-452-5640-5.
• Heller, Karl Antonio Vivaldi: The Red Priest of Venice, Amadeus Press (1997), ISBN 1-57467-015-8
• Kolneder, Walter Antonio Vivaldi: Documents of His Life and Works, C F Peters Corp (1983), ISBN 3-7959-0338-6
• Barbara Quick, Vivaldi's Virgins (novel), HarperCollins (2007), ISBN 978-0-06-089052-0.
• André Romijn. Hidden Harmonies: The Secret Life of Antonio Vivaldi, 2007 ISBN 978-0-9554100-1-7
• Eleanor Selfridge-Field (1994). Venetian Instrumental Music, from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. New York, Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-28151-5.
• Michael Talbot, Antonio Vivaldi, Insel Verlag (1998), ISBN 3-458-33917-5
• Michael Talbot: "Antonio Vivaldi", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed August 26, 2006), (subscription access)
• Vivaldi: Voice of the Baroque, H. C. Robbins Landon, 1996 University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226468429
• Sarah Bruce Kelly: The Red Priest's Annina, 2009 Bel Canto Press, ISBN 978-0-578-02566-7

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Antonio Vivaldi

• Catalog of instrumental works
• Complete works catalog
• Michael Talbot: Recent Vivaldi Discoveries from the online magazine Goldberg.
• Antonio Vivaldi by Fréderic Délaméa (Translated by Kirk McElhearn) from Goldberg.
• Two Vivaldi biopics may duel at the box office
• Free scores by Antonio Vivaldi in the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Antonio Vivaldi in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Antonio Vivaldi in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Vivaldi biography. Free English eBooks: 1. Talbot, M. Vivaldi. 1993; 2. Heller, K. Antonio Vivaldi: The Red Priest of Venice. 1997
• The Seasons in interactive hypermedia Allegro, Largo, Allegro (Shockwave required) at the BinAural Collaborative Hypertext