Rome, Dec. 30 (BNA): The Catholic Church and the northern Italian city of Ferrara made peace Thursday with Antonio Vivaldi, nearly 300 years after the city’s archbishop effectively canceled the performance of one of his operas, drowning the famous Baroque composer of his final years in exile.
Ferrara’s Archbishop Giancarlo Perego attended the opening ceremony of Vivaldi’s “Il Farnace” at the city’s public theater, a decision the theater artistic director hailed as a “remarkable gesture” that helps address the past and highlights one of Vivaldi’s lesser-known works.
“We want to give Vivaldi back what was taken from him here in Ferrara,” Marcello Corvino told the Associated Press before the premiere of “Il Farnace,” which tells the tragic family story of King Farnases II.
The cancellation proved financially disastrous for Vivaldi as he had already paid for the production himself in advance and was already experiencing a period of decline as his robotic business had lost popularity.
Vivaldi went into debt and died in 1741 in Vienna. Only after the rediscovery of his manuscripts did he gain posthumous fame at the “Four Seasons” and other concerts.
Massimo Fagioli, a Ferrara-born historian and church theologian, said that Vivaldi like other artists of his day had more artistic freedom in his native Venice than in places like Ferrara.
Federico Maria Sardelli, an expert on Vivaldi who directs the opera, said that after Cardinal Ruffo banned the Venetian composer from entering Ferrara, Vivaldi initially tried to record the production from afar.
He jotted down explicit theater directions as well as expressive and explanatory notes that he would usually give to his singers in person.
These symbols remain in the manuscript prepared for Ferrara’s production, which was never curated. These notes provided guidance for the opera’s opening Thursday for two nights.
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