Accusation concerning Antonio Vivaldi

[crooked_toe]

One of our children is taking an advanced placement class in European History. The teacher said that Antonio Vivaldi was not able to function as a priest for long because of his infidelities and that he had a young “housekeeper” who was probably a mistress. We are a house full of musicians and we really like Vivaldi’s works, but more importantly, our daughter wanted an opportunity to debunk the accusation, if it wasn’t true. Any historians or music historians that could shed light on these accusations directed at Vivaldi

 

[Joe_Kelley]

crooked toe:

One of our children is taking an advanced placement class in European History. The teacher said that Antonio Vivaldi was not able to function as a priest for long because of his infidelities and that he had a young “housekeeper” who was probably a mistress. We are a house full of musicians and we really like Vivaldi’s works, but more importantly, our daughter wanted an opportunity to debunk the accusation, if it wasn’t true. Any historians or music historians that could shed light on these accusations directed at Vivaldi

According to Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians he was unable to say mass after his first year as a priest because of an asthmatic condition.

He appears to have spent much of his life at the Seminario musicale dell’ Ospitale della Pieta, a school for girls. It seems an unlikely location to need a housekeeper or to have kept a mistress.