JAVS Fall 2022

Feature Article 1740 and the church was not completed until 1760. Neither Vivaldi nor Anna would have been living in Venice when it was finished. Documentation shows Rosa and Girolamo performing in various major cities in Germany and Austria between the years 1747 and 1754. All three Bons appeared at the Court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam several times, and there are letters between Frederick the Great and his sister, Wilhelmine, discussing Rosa Bon’s singing. 5 In 1755, Anna and both her parents were employed by Wilhelmine, who was married to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth. Originally a Margrave—or Marquis in French—was a medieval military governor. He was a landowner at a border who was given armed forces and fortifications to ward o invasions and keep the land secure. Bayreuth lies along the eastern border of Germany. By the 1700’s, the term Margrave was no longer a military o ce, more of a social ranking, directly below a Duke. By the 1800’s the title had disappeared altogether. When Wilhelmine arrived in Bayreuth, it was a generally uninspired area. But she and her husband worked hard to transform it into an artistic center. They built an Opera House in 1748, now an UNESCOWorld Heritage site, recently renovated in 2018. In 1754 and 1755, Frederick and Wilhelmine took an extended tour of France and Italy. When they returned, they established the Academy of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Their intention was to discover and nurture local talent and then send the brightest students on to Paris and Rome. The Academy is still in existence today, known as the Friedrich-Alexander University. Both Rosa and Girolamo taught at the Academy. There is no record of Anna being involved at the Academy, but her Op.1

to a convent, they were independent from the Catholic Church. When the governors realized there was a clear connection between concert donations and the quality of the girl’s music, they continued to make high performance standards a priority. By the middle of the 18th century the Ospedali’s chief source of income was from the girl’s performances. Detail from Antonio Stom’s 1729 painting “La Partenza del Bucintoro.” The Ospedali della Pieta is the tall, pinkish building in the center. When a girl joined the Ospedale Coro, she promised three things: 1. To remain at the Ospedale for at least ten years 2. To pass her skills on to two younger pupils 3. If she married and left the Ospedale, she was never to perform in public again 4 The idea behind this last promise was to maintain the uniqueness and novelty of their institution. At a time when women were quite repressed, these girls learned to sing and play instruments and to perform at a very high level in public. Unfortunately, this promise is also probably why many of the women musicians of the time remain unknown. Some of the women found ways around the promise and some chose to disregard it once they left. But marriage was not the reason Anna left the Pieta; when she was 16 or 17 years old, Anna joined her parents who had since left Russia and were now free lancing in Germany and Austria. Today, the building that housed the Ospedale della Pieta is the Hotel Metropole. Next to it is a church—Santa Maria della Pietà—known as “Vivaldi’s Church.” It is true that Vivaldi advised the architect, Giorgio Massari, on acoustics and other musical aspects for the church during its construction. However, Vivaldi left the Ospedale in

The Hotel Metropole and Santa Maria della Pietà today.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 2, Fall 2022

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