Music Book Review: Venetian Curiosities by Donna Leon, Baroque Era Title #2 With Vivaldi Concerti CD

All permanent settlements engender their share of local histories. A World Heritage Site since 1987, Venezia, La Serenissima (Venice, the most serene) and its lagoon furnish locals, tourists, transients, and visitors with unforgettable stories to hear and repeat. As world-respected ideator of Commissario Guido Brunetti detective and mystery novels, Donna Leon gathers a septet of tales, including:

• a baker being commemorated by one of the basilica’s ever-burning oil lamps for false accusation of theft and hanging;
• a customer discovering fingers of missing children in the neighborhood sausage-maker’s meats;
• a family dropping gold dinner plates into canals;
• a gambler risking the family palace;
• a pachyderm seeking sanctuary during Carnavale (Carnival); and
• prostitutes turning Venice into sixteenth-century Eurasia’s hot-spot. 

Venetian Curiosities has appeal as sources not only of folklore but also of art and music. For example, the text also introduces samples of the artistic output of:

• Giovanni Antonio Canal (October 17, 1697 – April 19, 1768); and
• Pietro Longhi (November 5, 1701 – May 8, 1785).  

Posterity judges the first-mentioned etcher, painter, and print-maker particularly adept at memorable Venice-scapes by:

• conferring the nickname Canaletto (little canal), in honor of his father being a theatrical scene painter and his stature being diminutive; and
• painting from nature, not inside studios.

Critics also know of the second-mentioned artist as an astute painter of:

• altarpieces and frescoes in his early years; and
• everyday life at Carnival, entertainments, and gambling later on. 

Music-lovers link Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678 – July 28, 1741) with:

• cantatas, especially Pianti, sospiri;
• concerts, especially Le quattro stagioni;
• operas, especially La costanza trionfante and Farnace;
• oratorios, especially Juditha triumphans;
• sacred choral works, especially Nulla in mundo pax sincera;
• sonatas, especially Santo Sepolcro; and
• symphonies, especially al Santo Sepolcro.

They particularly memorialize his output as:

• ordained priest with Ospedale della Pietà’s choir and orchestra of abandoned girls; and
• violinist.

So Venetian Curiosities nudges audiences into culturally enriching, educationally entertaining, geo-historically enthralling journeys through seven each of image-rich, information-packed vignettes and stringed instruments-rich concerts on an enclosed 64-minute compact disc, thanks to:

• Donna Leon’s authorship;
• Riccardo Minasi’s and Il Complesso Barocco’s performances; and
• Antonio Vivaldi’s concerti. 

My special thanks to:

• Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

Leon, Donna. 2012. Venetian Curiosities. Music by Antonio Vivaldi with Riccardo Minasi Conducting Il Complesso Barocco. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press.