Antonio Vivaldi was well-known in eighteenth-century Europe as a virtuoso violinist and composer. But he was in fact ruined later in his life by his relationship with the young opera singer Anna Girò. The common gossip, as portrayed in my novel, was that she was his mistress, an accusation which he always vehemently denied. In the end, he died impoverished in Vienna, and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
I came across the theory in several places (one of which being Barbara Quick’s phenomenal historical novel Vivaldi’s Virgins, about Anna Maria dal Violin of the Pietà) that Anna Girò was perhaps Vivaldi’s daughter, not his mistress. The idea fascinated me, and it also begged the question: if this were the case, who was Anna’s mother?
We will likely never know the true nature of Vivaldi’s relationship with Anna, but it was this “what if” idea that led me to write The Violinist of Venice.
Adriana d’Amato is a fictional character, as are her family and friends. While Adriana’s mother, Lucrezia, and best friend and sister-in-law, Vittoria, are not based on any real figures, they faced the same choice as many real wards of the Pietà did: to stay in cloistered seclusion and continue their (often celebrated) musical careers, or to leave for marriage and the outside world. Marriage indeed meant signing a contract stating that they would never again perform in public.
The Foscari family was a real Venetian patrician family of considerable wealth and power, and Ca’ Foscari still stands on the Grand Canal in Venice to this day. Tommaso and his family specifically are my inventions.
Each piece of Vivaldi’s music I describe here is real; each concerto that he and Adriana play together is one that I chose carefully to fit the mood and needs (and the era) of a particular scene. I hope that, after reading this book, you will seek out some of Vivaldi’s music if you are not already familiar with it, whether it is the music described here or other works.
I tried to bring the backdrop of sensual eighteenth-century Venice alive as much and as accurately as possible. Baroque Venice was a city long past the economic and military glory of the Renaissance; the discovery of the New World had made Venice’s formerly prime position as a trading empire between East and West irrelevant. As such, by Vivaldi’s lifetime what was once the richest and most powerful state in Europe had been slowly crumbling for years. The wealth of the great patrician families, originally amassed from trade, was quickly dwindling. Yet almost in defiance of this fact, eighteenth-century Venice was more decadent and hedonistic than ever. What money the wealthy had left they spent quickly, on lavish parties and costumes and clothing, on food and wine. Carnival (or Carnevale) went on for months at a time, and with the whole city going around masked for so long, the results were just as scandalous as you would expect.
Eighteenth-century Venice was, as modern Venice is today, a major tourist destination. Young aristocrats from around Europe would visit on the grand tour, and notable figures such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lord Byron also spent time in Venice. Tourists would partake of the city’s many delights: the architecture; the artwork; musical performances both at the many opera houses and at the Pietà and other institutions like it; traveling by gondola; and, of course, the famed Venetian courtesans.
Venice is a wonderful place to visit, to read about, and to imagine. I hope I have accomplished my goal of bringing it to life for you, and giving you an entertaining and meaningful story at the same time.