When the composer the orphanage is using proves a duller drawcard for patronage then the one with the more famous composer a few blocks down the canal, the board agrees to get the one they let go a few years back. He's good at tunes but even better at underselling himself. He himself was sold into the priesthood as a child when his mother made a foolish vow to her god to send him off there after reading a coincidence as a miracle. So, he has been less than stellar away from the orphanage but his reputation as a composer has improved and, through his incessant asthmatic coughing, manages to whip the players into a shape concordant with his fiery music. His name is Antonio Vivaldi. Yes, that Antonio.
When I saw that this film with this subject matter was on offer I resolved to see it. I'll put up with a lot of cuteness in the name of celebrating a favourite composer, twee as it can get, and Vivaldi's story is a good one. In this case, it's also a very well told one. The centre is not on the composer but one of the violinists in the orchestra, Cecilia. She is chosen as the soloist by Vivaldi as she played without regard for approval but what the music demanded. We follow her musical progress but also her arranged attachment to a war hero officer. Those two things will prove contradictory in this scheme.
While we haven't had an inundation of composer biopics lately, there is a tradition among them that the composers be treated as a mix of gods and rock stars, rude and explosive and beloved for the greatness of their art. This stretches well before Amadeus crowned the approach and is partly what I expected. Vivaldi wrote the hit song of virtuoso violinists in his series of concertos called The Four Seasons. His enlivening music that set a flashing violin performance against a string ensemble can win non-classical listeners the way that Kind of Blue wins jazz skeptics. His evocation of the forces of nature expresses a boldness and power that sets it apart from its baroque contemporaries; we hear the summer storms, feel the snowfall, and even the oppressive asthma-hostile breathless heat of summer in the sound without ever needing to be fanciful. It's there.
This film scores big points for doing little more than suggesting that the composer turn his attention to nature as an inspiration. In the performance moments, there are a very few subtle hints at this epochal work. Mostly, we see the effect of Vivaldi as a mentor to a developing musician, the limitations of a society that forbid both artistic heights and human fulfilment in the same person. Apart from the crowned heads and local worthies our pallett is as beige and ascetic as the uniform dresses that the orphans must wear and the plain lower cleric garb of the composer's priestly garb. The walls of the cultural prison might well have been the inspiraiton for the sense of dress in a Venice that has been so richly celebrated for its colour, fashion and art. When the music takes flight it almost lifts us from our seats.
As the post credit note (no, not a spoiler) reminds or informs, Vivaldi was a local unknown in his life and the wonders of his music were not uncovered until two centuries after his death. His life was as cloistered as it is suggested here. Cecilia's tale might seem more fanciful and free-thinking that would have been the case at the time. She is named after the patron saint of music which spirit is let free to roam her otherwise cloistered mind. But that is just the effect we encounter while listening to Vivaldi's music in the knowledge of how he lived and died. A sober portrait of genius but very welcome for all that.
Viewing notes: Primavera is still hanging on at cinemas like Melbourne's Nova but is also available through Prime for rent or purchase. .
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