Did you watch any of this, Ron?  I'm curious what you made of the all-female choir (on all four parts).  I suppose I ought to admit I was on this project (last night was the first time I watched more than a snippet, peeking through my fingers - I was surprised how few and quick the shots of the band were), so I heard them in person.  I thought they had a pleasingly clear sonority, with stronger bass/tenor than I would have expected.  But I wonder if this is another case where the human physique has changed so much in the intervening centuries (as discussed on the OVPP-in-Bach thread) that we cannot recapture how an all-female choir would have sounded then.

I was surprised there wasn't more information given during the programme.  For example, handsome though the church is, it wasn't the church Vivaldi knew.  The current building (designed by Giorgio Massari - the paintings are by Tiepolo) was begun in 1745, years after Vivaldi had left Venice and died.  The older church was slightly to the east, where the Hotel Metropole now stands.  Inside one of the Metropole's dining rooms they marked where the columns of the older church had stood.  It's clearly a much, much smaller space, and would have sounded quite different.  And in a smaller space, the process of performing on opposite sides of a church through screens (!) might have actually been possible without the use of television monitors...

This is my first attempt at using photobucket, so bear with me...

Recording the Gloria at the Pietà was quite tricky.  Sound and visuals were recorded separately, but we wanted to try to reproduce the effect of being on opposite balconies (we hadn't realised at this point how much smaller the original church had been).  So here are some violinists crammed amid recording equipment onto one of the Pietà's dusty balconies:



Peering across the way at our colleagues on the other side of the church, this is all we could see:



Ensemble was a dreadful problem that way, so eventually we recorded the sound on the ground floor of the church in the usual orchestral formation.

The visuals were filmed the next day.  Here's a shot of some of us resting between takes:



You can't tell from the photos how bitterly cold it was in there.  And those outfits didn't provide much insulation.  Most of us were wearing heavy socks, thick tights and boots under the voluminous skirts.  For most of us it was our first time getting into a proper laced-up corset.  The feminist in me has always been appalled at the idea of corsets - body fascism, organ prolapse, oxygen deprivation etc - but actually, they're quite fun!   

As for the musicality of the final result - well I have to agree with Bryn about it being a bit uninspired.  There were lots of problems and obstacles, if nothing else from the nature of the building - and a lot of things were hastily improvised.  I'm not that surprised that it came out sounding competent but a little staid.  But I'm still amazed it came together at all, and it was an incredible experience.

Well, never having heard the piece before, I thought it sounded pretty dammed good. So if you had recorded it to your own idea of how it should have sounded, my head would probably have exploded   

Still want to kill whoever is responsible for the @&*£$%ing announcements over the credits

Maybe we should avoid talk of exploding heads in case Tony Palmer reads this board - he might be planning a Vivaldi film 

Ron - I'm sure BBC4 will repeat it again.  It's already had a couple outings, I think, so it's bound to come back.

I thought I had a DVD of it that a friend made for me when it was first broadcast, but I can't find it anywhere...  I'll let you know if it turns up.

I wasn't paying attention to up and coming concerts strina so I missed this but it sounds really interesting. Great to read and see how you did it. I love your candlelight pic:

M symphonies predominate on R3 next week

PMD's first 5 over the afternoons in AP: another chance to see whether I can find my way into them.

Gergiev and the LSO start their Mahler cycle in the evenings on Po3 (which I have a feeling may be required listening for at least one or two here present. )

Mendelssohn and Mozart are in the mix, too.

LvB is CotW.