Vivaldi’s Greatest Protegé

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In early 18th century Venice, the Ospedale della Pietà took in abandoned baby girls through a tiny gap in the wall. In addition to ensuring the girls’ survival, the orphanage employed one of the world’s greatest ever composers - Antonio Vivaldi - to train the girls in music. One of his pupils, Anna Maria della Pietà, became his star protegé and went on to a phenomenal career as a violinist and the maestro’s biggest rival.

Anna Maria’s largely forgotten life is compellingly recovered and reimagined in this summer’s most eagerly anticipated historical novel, The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable. She joins Professor Suzannah Lipscomb to talk about how she discovered and brought Anna-Maria's heart-rending story to life.

Presented by Professor Susannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Alice Smith and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

"Et in Terra Pax" from Vivaldi's Gloria in D used with the kind permission of the Girl Choir of South Florida. Watch here >

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe, and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit,
0:07.0	the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Berlin to the Aztecs,
0:11.0	from Holbein to the Huguenoes, from Shakespeare to
0:14.7	samurai. Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage, and
0:20.1	witchcraft. Not in other words just the tutors but most definitely also the tutors. Everyone listening probably knows the name Antonio Vivaldi. You certainly know his work. He was the composer of the Four Seasons, among other things.
0:45.0	But what if he weren't the sole author of his work? What if the great 18th century Venetian musician drew on the efforts of a group of
0:54.8	disfigured disabled orphan girls. That is the idea behind one of this summer's
1:01.0	biggest debut novels, The Instrumentalist. Its author is Harriet Constable,
1:06.7	a journalist and filmmaker based in London. Raised in a musical family, she discovered the story of Vivaldi and the orphan girls he taught five years ago and has spent the
1:16.8	intervening years researching and writing her novel the instrumentalist in London and Venice.
1:24.6	It's been selected as one of the top 10 debuts of 2024 by the observer and it tells the story of the life of Anna Maria
1:31.1	de la Pieta.
1:37.0	Joining me to talk about Anna Maria is Herrick Constable. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb,
1:39.0	and you're listening to not just the Tudors.
1:45.0	Thank you so much for being with me. Thank you so much for having me. This is a pleasure.
1:47.0	Tell us a bit about Anna Maria della Piete just to wet the appetite to start us off.
1:52.0	Anna Maria della Pieter was a remarkable woman.
1:56.0	She lived at the turn of the 18th century in Venice.
2:01.0	She was an orphan.
2:02.0	She was posted through the wall of the Ospadale
2:05.4	Del Pieta, the orphanage in Venice where she grew up. 1696, I believe was the
2:12.0	exact year in which she was posted through.
	...

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