Venice!

As promised, today we take Tommy over to Venice!  Sarah and I really like Venice, and I have been annoyed that the last time I visited, I was unable to go into St. Mark’s Basilica where the Gabrieli boys worked and the Venetian Polychoral Style developed.  I also want to visit the Vivaldi places since I have become really interested in his work with women musicians.  So, we grabbed the train out of Padova and headed over to Venice (around 45 minutes away).

It is always magical to arrive in Venice and board a boat.  Being frugal travelers, we use the public transport boats (vaporetto) rather than water taxis and on our run into St. Mark’s square we managed to get perfect spots on the crowded boat.  Tommy just took it all in during the 40-minute ride.  After arriving and doing a quick walk to show Tommy the famous square we headed off to see some cool spots.

The first place we went was the area where the Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) was located.  This was the orphanage and women’s home where Vivaldi taught and served in the church next door.   For a long time I thought of Vivaldi as just another important composer who had done some works I enjoyed singing.  And then I discovered the research of Micky White.  I came to realize how much of our understanding of Vivaldi has been colored by the way the majority of music and musicians were approached during and after Vivaldi’s times.  However, the reality is that he most likely operated in a very different way because he worked (maybe even “served” is a better word) in an institution that was focused on women and girls and he approached his works with this requirement very much in his sights.  The problem is that we have since reinterpreted his works as if they were written for the outside world and not the women of the Ospedale della Pietà. 

As an example of this misunderstanding, I was taught that Vivaldi wrote his famous Gloria with male tenors and basses in mind and just “made do” with lower voiced women cover the lines since that is all he had.  In fact, some textbooks have suggested this should be “obvious” since he would have wanted to sell the score to make extra money.  However, recent scholarly work on Vivaldi has shown that he likely wrote for specific low-voiced women in order to showcase their voices and give them opportunities.  Just as he wrote his string pieces to show off specific women/girls he was teaching.  For me, this all means that Vivaldi was a much deeper and caring person than I realized.  And, as a conductor of a social justice choir, Vivaldi has become central to my thinking.  He has also made me reexamine many of my own thoughts. 

After seeing the Vivaldi sights (sadly the Ospedale is now Hotel Metropole), and a new church replaced the one Vivaldi would have played) we headed off to an out-of-the-way bookstore that has become as much a tourist site as a bookstore!  And why is it famous? Waterlogged books, bizarre bookshelves, and of course cats! Basically, the owner took a bunch of waterlogged books and turned them into stairs and other structures.  Gondolas and other forms of Venetian boats were used for shelves.  And finally, they allow a bunch of cats to rule to roost!  It was a very fun place to visit, and while we did do some purchasing, it was so crowded that we did not buy as much as we might have.

After the bookshop visit we did some wandering around. We took lots of pictures and made sure Tommy saw all the most famous places (Doge’s Palace, Bridge of Sighs, etc.).

After leaving the crazy bookshop and going for a walk around random streets, we stopped for lunch at an amazing restaurant on one of the canals.  It was the best seafood pasta I have had.  In fact, it was even better than the one I had in Rome which up until then had been the best thing I have eaten on this trip!

After lunch I finally visited St. Mark’s Basilica.  This was another musical pilgrimage location as I teach the Venetian Polychoral Style in most of my classes and I explain how the architecture of the building led to the musical style.  And while I have been to St. Mark’s, I had never been inside.  This time we went in!

After St. Mark’s we did some more wandering and then it was sadly time to take the train back home.  We were pretty exhausted and our relaxing train ride home was an express so we only got to sit for half and hour!