Hidden Virtuosas: music by and for the extraordinary female musicians of baroque Venice

Concerts and public engagement programs spotlight the music and lives of women composers from baroque Venice’s Ospedali, an institution that housed and educated abandoned children, the disabled, the destitute, and the incurably ill. The project is informed by new scholarship on the women and their artistic accomplishments, previously overshadowed by their connection to Antonio Vivaldi, who taught at the institution. An orchestral concert features modern premieres of reconstructed works, performed by Tempesta di Mare and the choir of Girard College, a boarding school for students from single-parent families with limited financial resources. The project’s central performance is the partially reconstructed North American premiere of Agata’s Ecce nunc, a six-movement cantata for solo voice, choir, and orchestra. A symposium considers questions of agency and women’s place in society.

The total grant amount represents project funding plus an additional 20% in unrestricted general operating support.