In the footsteps of Vivaldi in Venice

All music lovers always connect the city of Venice with the famous composer Antonio Vivaldi.

The great composer of Baroque music was indeed born in Venice and lived and worked here most of his life. But those who visit Venice, looking for evidence of him becoming one of the greatest violinists of all time, will probably be disappointed, because in addition to having little information about his life, little is left in his city.

But we know that little Antonio was baptized in the beautiful Gothic church of San Giovanni in Bragora, the parish of his family, in May 1678.

In fact, in this wonderful church there is a plaque dedicated to him next to the baptismal font. We do not know however, which was his house, but we can imagine a child and adolescent in St Mark's Basilica with his father, who was a violinist.

Ten years after his mother introduced him to an ecclesiastical career and Antonio went to study theology in the church of San Geminianus, in front of St Mark's Basilica, the jewel of the Renaissance destroyed by Napoleon.

In 1703 he was ordained a priest in the church of San Giovanni in Oleo which was also destroyed in the 800s.

He worked as a violin teacher in the Pietà Church from 1703 to 1720, but the current church overlooking the Riva degli Schiavoni is not the one known by Vivaldi, because the building was rebuilt in neoclassical style in 1740.

Antonio Vivaldi also worked as a theatre manager in the famous Sant'Angelo Theatre and it is where he wrote his most famous works. The theatre, which overlooked the Grand Canal, was destroyed in 1804 and replaced by a hotel.

Around 1730s he left Venice never to return, and died a poor and forgotten man in Vienna and buried in a mass grave with no tombstone.