Vivaldi – The Four Seasons

Vivaldi's Four Seasons at the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro

I Musici Veneziani play Vivaldi in the city he was born in, in the frescoed upper hall of the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro — a Baroque confraternity house on Campo San Salvador, a few minutes on foot from the Rialto. The orchestra was founded in 1996 and performs in costume of the eighteenth century.

Doors open half an hour before the concert. The calendar on this page shows every date currently on sale: the schedule is not the same in every month, so check the dates rather than assume a fixed evening of the week.

Two programmes: one with tenor, one with soprano

The season alternates two programmes. Both close with The Four Seasons complete.

Programme A, with tenor. Offenbach's Barcarolle; arias from Vivaldi's operas Il Giustino, L'incoronazione di Dario, Il Tigrane and La costanza trionfante; the Concerto “Alla Rustica”; Marcello's oboe concerto; and The Four Seasons.

Programme B, with soprano. Pachelbel's Canon; arias from Il Giustino, Ercole sul Termodonte and L'Olimpiade; the Concerto RV 151; a suite by Bach; and The Four Seasons.

What «The Four Seasons» is

The Four Seasons are four violin concertos — Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter — that Vivaldi published in Amsterdam in 1725 as the opening of his collection Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione. Each concerto was printed alongside a sonnet, and the music follows it closely: birdsong and a storm in spring, cicadas and heat in summer, a hunt in autumn, chattering teeth and ice in winter. It is played here complete, as the close of the evening.