Vivaldi’s violins. Venice and Cremona the music path

In addition to the important social role it played, the Ospedale della Pietà was a place of music and culture. The fame of the female musicians of the Pietà, who were known as figlie was such as to attract a considerable audience of intellectuals and members of the nobility from all over Europe who attended their concerts, praising the virtuosity of the singers and musicians. La Pietà invested considerable economic resources in the musical training of its pupils, who were selected on the basis of their aptitude for music, appointing renowned teachers, such as Antonio Vivaldi and Francesco Gasparini and purchasing prestigious musical instruments, made by famous luthiers such as Pietro and Andrea Guarneri or Matteo Goffriller. In fact, the Provincial institute "Santa Maria della Pietà" still preserves a rare collection of musical instruments from the Vivaldi era, dating back to between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which are of considerable historical and technical-scientific interest, as their functionality and structure have remained unchanged for the performance of Baroque music. In 2019 the Institute launched a project, developed with the collaboration of the "Antonio Stradivari" Violin Museum Foundation of Cremona, with the aim of restoring and cataloguing seventeen stringed musical instruments from the collection. As of September, after having cleaned and studied the instruments, a thematic exhibition entitled “Vivaldi's violins. Venice-Cremona the music path” will be set up as part of the “Vi. Ve. Vivaldi Venice" museum itinerary of the Church of the Pietà. The exhibition will be a moment in which the public can enjoy the collection and studies that have been carried out on each instrument and explore the history of Venetian violin making, of Antonio Vivaldi and the fruitful partnership that the Ospedale della Pietà had with the Red Priest.