Vivaldi’s Virgins.

Quick, Barbara (author).

The Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, where Antonio Vivaldi was employed from 1703 to 1740, is the setting for this novel narrated by Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the orphan musicians known as the figlie de coro. Foundlings with musical talent received special training, and their concerts were a popular and lucrative attraction, the money going to care for all the children left as infants in the niche in the Church of the Pietà’s wall. The adolescent Anna Maria knows nothing about her parentage, but a sympathetic nun encourages her to write letters to her mother all the same, and these letters alternate with an older Anna Maria’s recollections to move the story along. Quick has chosen a fascinating backdrop. Her novel shimmers with details about music and Venice in the early 1700s, as well as life within the Pietà. Plotting is less successful, but readers won’t mind. Read with Girl with a Pearl Earring (2001)and The Birth of Venus (2004).