Ospedale della Pietà
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Ospedale della Pietà is a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice.
It opened in the early fifteenth century as a charitable institution intended to provide for orphaned and abandoned girls, most of whom would remain for their entire lives unless they married; babies could be left at the convent via a baby hatch. Boys, too, were accepted, but usually left after a number of years. Children and adults alike were given intensive musical training.
By the late seventeenth century, the Ospedale (along with three other ospidali) operated a renowned music school in addition to its orphanage, obtaining significant income from musical composition and performance; it became so common for noblemen to place their daughters there that a warning not to do so was inscribed on an outer wall. At least two of these women, Anna Bon and Vincenta Da Ponte, are known to have become composers.
The composer Antonio Vivaldi was master violin tutor at the Ospedale della Pieta from 1704, and chief composer from 1713 until he left Venice in 1740. Much of Vivaldi's music was written expressly for the women of the Ospedale. Some of the babies had been abandoned because of their physical deformities, and Vivaldi had instruments specially adapted for these women. The female orchestra and choir gave concerts to aristocratic audiences while hidden behind a metal grille. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one such listener, and describes the performance in his Confessions (1770):
I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure.
He goes on to describe meeting the musicians.
The Ospedale della Pietà still operates today, although with a much-reduced intake of around eight pupils per year. The original buildings on the Riva degli Schiavoni only partially survive, having been replaced by a hotel.
