CONTENT COURTESY AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
During Vivaldi’s time teaching at the Ospedale della Pietà (1703-40),this orphanage developed an
international reputation for its concerts, presented exclusively by the young women who were
educated there. His Gloria and Four Seasons were among hundreds of works performed for
the first time by the orphans of the Pietà.
Around 1720, Agata, a baby born without fingers on her left hand, was passed through the small
revolving door (called a scaffetta) in the orphanage’s exterior wall. She went on to become a star
student, named as the soprano soloist in manuscript copies of cantatas by Giovanni
Porta and Andrea Bernasconi and also mentioned in an anonymous poem about the musicians of
the Pietà.
Agata della Pietà also proved herself a gifted composer. Her compositions have remained
hidden to this day as fragments in a Venice library. Some three hundred years later, her music will
be heard for the first time outside the walls of the Venice orphanage, performed by the
Australian Chamber Choir, directed by Douglas Lawrence.
During Agata’s student years, Vivaldi was under contract to write two concertos or cantatas a
month for the school to perform. With a busy schedule touring Europe as a successful opera
composer, he had relinquished his post as Director of Music in 1718. His new contract stipulated
that he mustrehearse with the orphans at least five times when in Venice.
Agata was one of three orphans of the Pietà known to have become a composer. Like Vivaldi’s
Gloria, Agata della Pietà’s Cantata is scored for choir, soloists and orchestra. From the
surviving parts for first violin, alto, bass and cello, Elizabeth Anderson has reconstructed the
work, reinstating the missing parts for second violin, viola, tenor and soloists.
Alongside the first performance of Agata della Pietà’s Cantata is the first performance of a work
by Australian composer, Christine McCombe. Power in Stillness was commissioned by the
ACC in 2020 for their European tour, which was cancelled due to COVID.
Melbourne novelist, Christine Balint’s new book, Water Music, won the 2021 Viva la Novella
Prize. Drawing on archival research in Venice, Water Music tells the story of a young girl growing
up and learning music in a Venetian orphanage. Christine will give a pre-concert talk at each
performance. The book is available on the ACC website and at the box office.
