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5.0 out of 5 stars A young girl from a Venice orphanage follows her dream to be a virtuoso violinist …
Wow! What an incredible debut this is. I absolutely consumed this book and even found myself furtively reading in the middle of the night with a tiny torch. Anna Maria della Piétro is a fascinating heroine and while not always likeable, I found myself rooting for her. Like all the girls at the Piétro, Anna Maria is an orphan, posted through the tiny hatch in the Ospedale Della Pietá often with a note or keepsake from the unlucky girl who had leave her child behind. The author shows us the incredible splendour of Venice, a place I fell completely in love with, contrasted with it’s destitution and desperation. A state that seems more likely for women, especially those from a poorer background. The convent brings up it’s girls very strictly, according to the Catholic faith and the virtues of hard work from scrubbing the floors or working in the nursery. It is also a college of music. Each girl is taught at least one instrument with the best trying out for the orphanage’s orchestra, the figlio. Those chosen will work with the master of music and they will play in the some of the most beautiful basilicas and palazzos in all of Venice. Anna Maria’s great love is the violin and there’s no doubt she will try to become the best.Anna Maria is a bundle of youthful exuberance, fireworks, talent and ambition. She practically leaps off the page and it seems impossible for her to fail. She starts by aiming to be noticed by the master of music and after that to be the youngest member of the figlio. No sooner is one ambition fulfilled then she’s already thinking of the next. The rewards are also intoxicating - not that Anna Maria cares much for the lace shawls from Burano, but she is partial to the small pastries with candied peel and spices that she loves to share with friends Paulina and ?? Through them we see the girl rather than the musician. They bring out a lightness of spirit, playfulness and a sense of sisterhood. The love she has for her custom made violin is absolutely infectious and when she becomes the favourite of the music master will those girlish aspects of her character remain? Constable shows us a dark underbelly, both to the Ospedale and their music programme. Although the alternatives are even worse. She also shows us huge disparity between the rich and poor in Venice. As visitors we only see the beauty and history of this incredible city, but once I did catch a glimpse of the systems that keep the city going. While waiting on a jetty to catch my water taxi one early morning I met the dustbin men of the city, having to negotiate tiny lanes and creaking jetties to clear up after all the visitors. When Anna Maria gets to play at private palazzos, the grandeur is overpowering. After her performances she is showered with lavish gifts that are at home where she plays but out of place in her bare room. She also notices that those orphans who don’t excel are easy pickings for the rich patrons of the Ospedale. Unsurprisingly, Anna Maria wants to escape the fate of becoming a wife to a much older man and putting aside her talent. As she is taken under the wing of a female patron, Elizabetta ?? She’s impressed by incredible dresses and Elizabetta’s elegant palazzo, but this patron also uses her wealth for good. She shows Anna Maria another fate for the cities’ poor women, by taking her to a brothel where the wealthy woman helps with supplies ensuring these women can make their living in safe and clean surroundings. She points out to Anna the danger in becoming a favourite - there are always people lining up to replace you. When the master is fickle or arrested by a newer, talented young girl what would happen to Anna? It makes her think about the person she replaced for the first time.I loved the synaesthetic aspect to Anna Maria’s talent because it really added to my understanding of why she loves it so much. I have tastes that are related to colour, so if I see a garden full of beautiful yellow daffodils my mouth begins to water and I get the sensation and taste of lemon sherbet sweets. As Anna Maria plays, colours dance through her and the flurry of colour gives us a sense of how transformative it is for her to play. She is utterly lost in this moments. She’s floating within a rainbow of colour. Even when she begins to compose the written notes on the page are hastily drawn because she’s somewhere else experiencing a unique explosion of sound and colour. Even though she’s not always likeable I was still rooting for her. However some of her tougher decisions are made from within the context of survival. Only by being ruthless and getting to the position of power she craves can she feel safe. Then she can make better, more equitable decisions from a place of safety. This is an incredible story, made all the more powerful because Anna did exist. While this is a novelisation rather than an autobiography she was real and so was her music master . He is a mercurial and sometimes cruel man whose identity remains unspoken - although I did realise who he was part way through. I loved that this is written as a feminist counterpoint to his fame, highlighting a woman of equal talent who is cheated in a creative partnership and ends up with her woke stolen and uncredited. This is an abusive relationship characterised by manipulation, exploitation and a fascination with talented pre-pubescent young girls. Harriet has created a brilliant work of historical fiction that gives voice to one such young woman full of spark, talent and incredible drive to succeed. Her book is totally immersive, plunging us into a world where women were expendable, only there to parrot and enhance a man’s talent. It’s a powerful and compelling tale that I’m sure I’ll still remember when it comes to my end of year favourite books.
4.0 out of 5 stars Very engaging historical fiction
Anna Maria della Pieta is an orphan, passed through a hole in the wall of the Pieta as a baby she has known no other life. However, when she picks up a violin at age eight she finds her vocation. Able to see the colours of notes, she becomes a virtuoso, joining the famed convent orchestra and rising to become first violinist under her teacher, a renowned composer. Anna Maria can compose as well but when her teacher finds out he destroys her works and Anna Maria vows vengeance.The character of Anna Maria is a real-life one, a maestro from 17th century Venice almost forgotten now. Her teacher, Antonio Vivaldi, is not named here and her story almost forgotten. Constable has woven a really engaging book around the scant facts and one with a bit of personality, Anna Maria is definitely no insipid orphan. A solid piece of work.
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, vivid, emotionally charged throughout the book
Just exceptional and great to hear a perspective on the back story around Vivaldi. Great book - look forward to the next novel of the untold stories of some of the great women supporting and influencing the world’s composers.
5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable debut novel
I really do love stories with a historical context, and this is set around the composer Vivaldi in the early 1700s – and the orphanage of young girls where he taught music.Anna Maria feels herself destined for the greatness of ‘maestro’ status from an early age, and does everything to grasp every opportunity in what can be a vicious and bullying environment. I loved the characters in this story, and the real feel for history – who knows how many women in history have been ignored because of their status, and this just demonstrates the possible.
4.0 out of 5 stars Vivaldi's star pupil
As a baby, Anna Maria della Pietà is deposited at the Ospedale della Pietà by her sex-worker mother. Like her mother, Anna Maria 'sees' colours. She is a naturally gifted musician, and attracts the attention of the music master, who agrees to teach her. (His full name is not given in the text, but he is Antonio Vivaldi.) Anna Maria grows up determined to make a name for herself, sacrificing everything -- especially friendship -- for her ambition to be a famous composer. She certainly receives a great deal of popular acclaim, and the famous Tartini declares her 'maestro'. But this is 18th-century Venice, and her teacher (having taught her and the other girls of the figlie di coro to compose in his own style) makes it clear that no female name shall appear on any of the compositions they have worked on together.Constable evokes the sounds, scents and tastes of Anna Maria's world, from the fish and salt and spices of the waterfront to the colours of the music that drifts through Anna Maria's dreams of drowning. Though Anna Maria's life is sheltered, the darker realities of life are never far away: illness, unwanted pregnancy, theft, the men who attend concerts solely because they wish to marry Pietà girls. And the girls themselves can be cruel -- Anna Maria most definitely included.Perhaps the novel would have been better without the introductory chapter, describing Anna Maria's conception and birth and the origin of her nightmares about drowning: and perhaps her behaviour is sometimes anachronistic. But her rage at her teacher's duplicity, and her determination to perfect her art, are all too familiar, and Constable weaves an engaging account of Anna Maria's disillusionment, and her vengeance. The novel is well-researched and the author's afterword provides a useful list of sources, and a summary of Anna Maria's life after the end of The Instrumentalist.
Remarkable piece of musical history!
It’s easy to applaud when an author reveals that a man has taken credit for the work of a woman. But when that man is Antonio Vivaldi, and the young woman has been raised in an orphanage in Venice… that’s when the book truly grabbed my attention!This is a book about perseverance, about finding (and keeping) one’s place in this world, about making difficult choices and living with those decisions … and about music. The music is described so exquisitely that you can hear the notes and see the colors. An incredible novel!
The historical novelist & her characters
The background & setting of this book, early 18-century Venice in general, & the home for orphan girls, the Ospedale della Pieta in particular, are well researched & probably as authentic as it's possible to get. As regards the story, the author confesses to some anachronisms, particularly relating to the composer Tartini, so it's possible to forgive her, though I think with a little ingenuity she could have made Tartini's role in the story redundant.It's her treatment of the main characters, or one of them, that I find distasteful. Very little is known for certain about the life of the novel's protagonist, Anna Maria, the violin prodigy for whom it's presumed Vivaldi, who was associated with the Ospedale for many years, wrote some of his concertos. She was a pupil at the Ospedale, & later a teacher, spending the entirety of her long life in the institution. So it's permissible to create a fictional version of her character, on the understanding that it IS fiction, & may not bear a close relationship to her actual life. The same, it's true, may be said of Vivaldi, except that a good deal is known about his life. What we can't know, of course, is anything about the daily routine of his teaching life at the Ospedale, or his relationship with his pupils, of whom, in the real world, Anna Maria was one. So again a bit of fictionalizing is permissible. But...the latter part of the story hinges (spoiler alert) on an action of Vivaldi's that (although much in the previous pages may be seen to lead up to it) is breathtaking in its jealousy, spitefulness & vindictiveness. Posterity doesn't know an awful lot about Vivaldi's character, though one commentator has called him 'difficult'; but I think it's unfair to the memory of a real historical character to attribute to him, even in a fictional setting, such a heinous act, when there's nothing, I believe, in the record to indicate that he would have been capable of such.True, the historical novelist has a fine line to tread between fact & fiction; but I can't help thinking she has an obligation to portray real historical characters as no worse than the record tells us they were.
Women's rights in Venice during the 17th and 18th centuries
This is a beautifully written book.The story centres on a baby left by her mother in an orphanage run by some very harsh nuns. Illegitimate babies were raised to be members of a very high-quality orchestra or to be given in marriage as soon as they reached puberty.One young violinist became famous throughout Europe. Her teacher stole her compositions on the basis that no one would publish music written by a girl. I guessed the name of the teacher before it was revealed. (That made me feel good. I wonder if the author planted clues deliberately.) I really enjoyed the descriptions of life in the orphanage, the "colours" of the music and the relationships between the members of the orchestra and their teacher. The drive to excel in a musical world is shown in exquisite and painful detail. Friendships suffer. It might have been centuries ago, but I felt there is a contemporary parallel.
brilliant first novel
I look forward to more like this. Well written novel. Anna Maria was brought to life. The life of an orphan in Venice that reached the heights of celebrity
Great story
I always love a book more when I learn something. And the story of Anna Maria della Pieta was special. So happy the author decided to write her story.
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The Instrumentalist: The Times Top Ten Bestseller
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Product origin: United Kingdom
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