At 6:42 PM -0400 3/25/07, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
Good day:
Great news for fans of Vivaldi: there are apparently two movie
productions in the works dealing with the Red Priest.
Joseph Fiennes has been cast to play Vivaldi in a version directed by
Boris Damast from a script by journalist Steven Freedman. Damast has
stated he has set the bar high for himself by wishing to do for
Vivaldi what <i>Amadeus</i> did for Mozart, or even better.
Hmmm. What "Amadeus" did was to make Mozart look like an idiot!!
The 2nd movie is a French production, with Stefano Dionisi (he was the
lead in <i>Farinelli</i>. This French production has a website at
http://www.vivaldi-lefilm.com/accueil.html#stop Judging from the
website, the photography looks stunning.
Yes, the photography does look stunning, as does the costuming.
However, what is considerably less than stunning are the technical
details that a decent consultant on baroque performance would have
caught. Yes, the cellos are resting on the floor without endpins,
and no, I don't seem to see any chinrests. What I do see, however,
is metal strings, fine tuners on some of the Es and at least one of
the As, modern Tourte model bows and modern bow positions, none of
which existed in Vivaldi's lifetime. It probably means that they
used real players in the film, but not experienced baroque players
with period equipment. It will be interesting to see. And the
mixture of male and female orchestra players strikes me as HIGHLY
unlikely if those scenes represent the orphanage Vivaldi worked at,
where I believe the girls and young women played behind screens so as
not to put them on display, or indeed if they are supposed to
represent professional players. Never happened, most likely.
Nice to see that anachronism is alive and well in French film making,
in spite of the sumptuous costuming.
Hard to believe that just 50 years ago, Vivaldi was hardly known to
the general classical music listening public. My my, how fickle fate
is.
Speak for yourself. 50 years ago I had LPs of Vivaldi in my
collection at college, some of which I still own. Telemann, no;
never heard of the dude! What is STILL missing in Vivaldi
scholarship, of course, is the operas and choral music on which he
lavished so much care and creativity. Nobody even knew they existed
50 years ago, but the concertos, absolutely!
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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