From his mid-twenties, Antonio Vivaldi was employed as a violin teacher at the Ospedale della Pietá in Venice. Although officially an orphanage, the Ospedale was in reality a home for illegitimate daughters of Venetian noblemen, and was a generously endowed school and residence with one of the finest orchestras in the city. The ‘Red Priest’ wrote several concertos for his preferred student there (La Favorita), and these display wonderfully florid invention and virtuosic pyrotechnics. This is a rare opportunity to…