Vivaldi's Virgins: A Novel

Barbara Quick

oct 2009 · Harper Collins

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In this enthralling new novel, Barbara Quick re-creates eighteenth-century Venice at the height of its splendor and decadence. A story of longing and intrigue, half-told truths and toxic lies, Vivaldi's Virgins unfolds through the eyes of Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the elite musicians cloistered in the foundling home where Antonio Vivaldi—known as the Red Priest of Venice—is maestro and composer.

Fourteen-year-old Anna Maria, abandoned at the Ospedale della Pietà as an infant, is determined to find out who she is and where she came from. Her quest takes her beyond the cloister walls into the complex tapestry of Venetian society; from the impoverished alleyways of the Jewish Ghetto to a masked ball in the company of a king; from the passionate communal life of adolescent girls competing for their maestro's favor to the larger-than-life world of music and spectacle that kept the citizens of a dying republic in thrall. In this world, where for fully half the year the entire city is masked and cloaked in the anonymity of Carnival, nothing is as it appears to be.

A virtuoso performance in the tradition of Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vivaldi's Virgins is a fascinating glimpse inside the source of Vivaldi's musical legacy, interwoven with the gripping story of a remarkable young woman's coming-of-age in a deliciously evocative time and place.

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Novelist and poet Barbara Quick is author of Vivaldi's Virgins, translated into 13 languages, made into an audiobook, and in development as a mini-series by Lotus Pictures. Her first novel, Northern Edge, was awarded the Discover: Great New Writers Prize. Her debut book of poems, The Light on Sifnos, won the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize. She returned to Italy to write A Golden Web, which tells the tale of the pioneering teenage anatomist, Alessandra Giliani. Barbara’s fourth novel, What Disappears (2022), is a multi-generational tale of ballerinas and Jewish history set in Belle Époque Paris. An avid student of other languages, Barbara has traveled the world to do the research for her stories. She and her husband split their time between the Hudson River Valley and the Wine Country of Northern California.