Italy iii--at Vivaldi's place

Strangely enough, a midwife baptized Antonio Vivaldi the moment he was born. Those who speculate on such things claim tiny Antonio might have been sickly. Others point to an earthquake that hit Venice just then, an event that traumatized the new parents. And then there are those who say that his mother rushed things along and thereby devotedly consecrated her new baby boy for the priesthood.

If that's true, she was successful because her son became a priest, a musical priest, at a small church (for Italy and Venice)--this one, Chiessa Della Pieta, a gorgeous place long ago connected to the Devout Hospital of Mercy (Ospedia del Pieta), an orphanage for abandoned street kids, where Vivaldi wrote and taught music for thirty years--and where the young women he taught performed. This is Vivaldi's own church, where he wrote most of his music. We were there for a concert in the very church where abandoned girls from off the street were taught his music. 

His most beloved work, The Four Seasons, was written far away in Mantua, where he lived for three years, and where the inspiration for the music, which includes the sounds of the seasons, must have risen from the countryside where he walked. 

No matter. It was pure blessing to sit in Vivaldi's church, where his students performed, and listen to his most famous work done by a sextet of strings and a harpsichord, played by musicians who throughout the text appeared to speak to each other through the movements of the music. 

Two women from Germany sat beside us. One of them told me that they'd flown to Florence that afternoon simply for the concert. Vivaldi is loved.

 Way up there atop the altar piece, The Visitation of Mary, the words Altare Privilegitum (the Altar of Privilege) are boldly printed. Here--

The reference is to the altar itself, the place where mass is celebrated at Chiessa Della Pieta, where Vivaldi himself may have served--and most certainly was served--the Eucharist. 

I couldn't help thinking--may I be forgiven!--that ours, that night, in his church, was a wholly different "altar of privilege," a blessing all the same.