Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice on March 4th, 1678. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian composer. He learned violin from his father and spent much of his life teaching violin and leading the orchestra at a girls' orphanage in Vienna. In 1703, he became ordained as a priest and was widely known as the "Red Priest" due to his red hair. His nicknamed IL Prete Rosso because of his red hair. He wrote more than 500 concertos.
When he was young he learned violin from his father, Giovanni Battistas Vivaldi. His older brother was a good violinist in the church of St. Mark. Antonio was also trained for religious service as well as musical life, so he became priest. But in 1703 he became violin teachers at the Ospitale della Pieta in Venice. Few years later he became leaders of the orchestra. Under his directions, the orchestras succeed and achieved a lot of goals. Vivaldi remained in the Pietà orchestra until 1740.
Antonio Vivaldi was really good at vocal and instrumental music. He composed more than seven hundred pieces of music. Today the vocal music of Vivaldi is little known. But in his own day he was famous and successful as an opera composer. Most of his operas were written for Venice, but some were performed throughout Italy in Rome, Florence, Verona, Vicenza, Ancona, and Mantua. Vivaldi was also one of the greatest eighteenth century violinist, or musicians with amazing ability.
Vivaldi was employed for most of his working life by the Ospedale della Pietà, generally accepted as being the best of the four Opera, and many of his concerti were amazing. The brilliance of some solo writing in his "student exercise" concertos testifies to the extremely high standard attained by "his" ladies.
Vivaldi's relationship with the Ospedale began in 1703, when he was named as violin teacher there. Until 1709, Vivaldi's appointment was renewed every year and again after 1711. Between 1709 and 1711 Vivaldi was not attached to the Ospedale. Perhaps in this period he was already working for the Teatro Sant' Angelo, an opera theater. He also remained active as a composer - in 1711 twelve concertos he had written were published in Amsterdam by the music publisher Estienne Roger under the title l'Estro armonico (Harmonic Inspiration).
During his life, the prolific Vivaldi wrote around 500 concertos, along with a wealth of opera and religious pieces.Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni), is his most famous piece of work. A set of four violin concertos, each section was composed to resemble its respective season.While something of a musical genius, he was also said to be cocky. He once claimed he could compose a concerto in all its parts faster than it could be copied.Most of Vivaldi's music was lost. The majority of what we have of his work today was discovered in the 1920's, packed away in a trunk.Like Mozart, Vivaldi died in poverty in 1741, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
At the end of 1731 Vivaldi returned to Venice, but at the beginning of 1732 he left again for Mantua and Verona. In Mantua, Vivaldi's opera Semimmide was performed and in Verona, on the time of the opening of the new Teatro Filarmonico, La fida Ninfa, with a libretto by the Veronese poet and man of letters, Scipione Maffei, was staged.
After his stay in Prague, Vivaldi concentrated mainly on