Happy Spring, and Welcome to our April Newsletter!
Cassata Siciliana (image by Magnago)
We are looking forward to performing our final concert-set of this crazy 2020-21 season the weekend of May 14th (Brattleboro Music Center) & May 15th (Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, Cambridge) for a reduced, masked live audience! As with all of our concerts, we will be streaming this all-Vivaldi program for free on our website a week later, starting May 22nd at 7.30pm. Please scroll down for further details and info.
We are extremely grateful to all of you, our friends and supporters, who have continued to follow our music-making during these challenging times, as we all adapted to a new kind of isolation and the need to move to virtual experiences. We hope with next season, we will be back to normal capacity at all of our venues, and we look forward to seeing you in person! It has also been wonderful to reconnect with many of you through our online streaming, so we may continue a hybrid version in the future.
Speaking of which, if you missed our March concert of Mozart’s extraordinary chamber work, his Divertimento in E-flat major for String Trio, K. 563, you can still view it for one more week! Please share with your friends and family. Understandably, we probably are all suffering a little bit from computer fatigue!
Next month: Escape to VENICE!
In May, come escape with us to La Serenissima, as we celebrate the great musical talents of the young orphaned girls Antonio Vivaldi taught as the director of music at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà. In the 16th century, Venice built four grand hospices intended to take in orphans, the sick, the old, the impoverished, as well as illegitimate children shunned by society. The more musically inclined girls were taught singing from a very young age, often by their elder ‘sisters' in the hospice. The four Ospedali developed into veritable music conservatories where the figlie de coro (choir girls) learned solfeggio, singing, and had instrumental instruction. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, the level of excellence achieved by these institutions was so extraordinary, their musical activities flourished without parallel. The Most Serene Republic of Venice became an important cultural focal point, of which the Ospedali were an essential tourist destination. Visiting royalty and other personalties from all over Europe expressed with wonder the sublime music they heard floating from behind the latticework, shielding the young girls from view.
“My friends would call me Chiareta, but the others only knew me as Chiara del violino. No surname. When they found me on the steps of the Ospedale della Pietà, I was barely two months old. It was my luck. Girls like me were usually treated as daughters of sin, as unwanted reminders objects of shame and commiseration. But I and my companions were to become the best musicians in Venice, in the service of the pious Institution of the Pietà. We were to be the most admired, the most coveted girls in the entire city.” Diary entry from Chiara del violino, c. 1770
Vivaldi composed a violin concerto for this star pupil, Chiareta. Here is the Andante from his Concerto for Violin, Strings and B.C. in B-flat major RV 372a.
Ospedale della Pietà c. 1715
Spaghetti alle vongole — a gusto!!
Of course no trip to Venice would be complete without tasting one of its most celebrated pasta dishes:
Spaghetti alle vongole (with clams)
Ingredients for 4 people:
- 1 kg of clams
- 400 g spaghetti
- 3 cloves of garlic
- Extra virgin olive oil to taste
- Parsley to taste
- Chilli to taste
- Salt and pepper to taste
- White wine to taste
- 5/6 cherry tomatoes to taste
Procedure:
Clean the clams, and soak them in water and coarse salt for about 1 hour to make them lose any impurities.
Drain them with a colander, then with running water, shake them and repeat the operation again to make them lose any possible residual sand.
Bring the water to a boil to cook the spaghetti. Put the cleaned and purged clams in a pan with a drizzle of oil and a clove of garlic, cover with a lid and let them open over high heat and shake the pan over the fire often.
As soon as the clams have opened, remove the pan from the heat (do not overcook them, otherwise they lose their flavor).
Meanwhile, with a colander, filter the liquid from the clams, collect it in a small bowl and set aside (here there is all the flavor of the sea).
Wash the cherry tomatoes, cut them in half, quickly toss them in a pan with 2 crushed cloves of garlic and the oil. Add the chopped parsley, a piece of chilli and the water of the clams we had set aside.
Cook the spaghetti in abundant salted water.
Meanwhile, thicken the sauce a little in the pan and finally add the clams and put a third of a glass of white wine over high heat, then let it evaporate.
Taste the sauce, add salt if necessary (although the clams already have the right flavor) and add a pinch of pepper if you like. Drain the spaghetti al dente and toss in the pan until cooked. Chop a sprig of parsley and add it to the spaghetti.
Vivaldi’s Orphan Girls: Virtuosi della Pietà
Celebrating the young orphan girls under Vivaldi’s tutelage, whose virtuosic talent and charisma created a musical mecca in 18th-century Venice.
Friday, 14th May at 5-6pm & 7.30-8.30pm Brattleboro Music Center, Brattleboro, VT (40 people max at each sitting)
Saturday, 15th May 7.30-8.30pm Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, Cambridge (50 people max)
Free streaming on www.sarasamusic.org from Saturday, May 22 at 7.30pm
All Vivaldi:
Sinfonia in G-major for strings & basso continuo, RV 146
Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major RV 383a, from Op. 4 “La Stravaganza” for violin, strings, & basso continuo
Zeffiretti che sussurrate RV 749.31 for soprano, strings & harpsichord
Concerto No. 12 E Minor RV 409 for violoncello solo, 2 violins, viola & basso continuo
Ascende laeta RV 635 for soprano, strings, & basso continuo
Trio Sonata for 2 violins and basso continuo in F major, RV 68
In turbato mare irato, solo motet for voice, strings, & basso continuo in G major, RV 627
Kristen Watson, soprano; Susanna Ogata, Susannah Foster, Keats Dieffenbach, violins; Jenny Stirling, viola; Jennifer Morsches, Timothy Merton, cellos; John McKean, harpsichord
All in-person performances will be conducted using current regulations for covid-19 safety including state occupancy limits, mandatory mask-wearing, and social distancing. Please note that no walk-up ticket purchases will be allowed for our Cambridge performance; all tickets must be reserved online in advance. Please also note that changes to state occupancy limits may require us to refund ticket purchases if we exceed occupancy.
Free streaming on www.sarasamusic.org from Saturday, May 22nd at 7.30pm! Please join us, and share the joy of Vivaldi with your friends.
