VENICE: Virtues and Vices
THE ARTISTS
Pascale Beaudin, soprano
Oliver Brault, violin
Chloe Fedor, violin
Nicole Divall, viola
Loretta O’Sullivan, cello
Scott Pauley, lute
Andrew Appel, harpsichord
THE PROGRAM
Vivaldi: Sonata for 2 violins opus 1 #1
Strozzi: Amor dormiglione & Il Lamento
Marini: Passacaglia
Monteverdi: Si Dolce è'l tormento
Legranzi: Sonata La Col’Alta
Galuppi: Concerto a quattro
Vivaldi: Motet In Furore
A city of palaces and cathedrals floating on water, drenched in sunlight or camouflaged by a fog so impenetrable that you cannot see your own held out hand…Venice is a place both haunted and heavenly; fed and frightened in imagination.
Carnival, all masked, hides the face and exposes the fancy beyond any other place or event. Venetian culture offers extremes of saintliness and sinfulness.
Add to this, music elevates every moment. Music is heard in churches and orphanages. Music lives in the opera houses, casinos, and fraternities. Music is heard on the canals and in back alleys. As Venetian sunlight and art flood the eye, music inebriates the ear.
The orphanages or Ospidali of Venice served as gardens of performance and composition. Equal to those in Naples, it was a magnate for travelers from the north. They came to listen to the compositions of Vivaldi and Galuppi sung and played by young women of embarrassed backgrounds but indisputable and virginal grace. Illegitimate offspring, possibly the children of domestic workers with their princely employers, became angels of melody at the several institutions. They sang motets and played concertos.
Yes, other institutions, fraternities under the protection of saints, offered centers of art, poetry, and song. These clubs were stews of virtue and vice. Barbara Strozzi focused much of her unique and unmatched talent for song to one such scuola. Her arias and cantatas run the gamut from lament to lascivious, from cupid’s arrows to broken hearts. Her only equal was Monteverdi who matched her ability to carve a love song worthy of the amorous Casanova or the many serenading gondoliers.
But more than anything else, we gravitate towards Venetian music for its radiance, its vitality, its variety and color, and its celebration of life…our own lives if we are so lucky. It is an art and a city of resonating contrasts. Just the smell of the lagoon, sometimes off-putting but then, in the passing of a second, an invitation to all the frutti di mare, well prepared and floating over our pasta as we sit in the gardens of a Cipriani restaurant on the island of Torcello in the lagoon.