Venice, 1716. Inside the Ospedale della Piet\u00e0, the foundling girls receive instrumental training, and visitors come from all over Europe to hear their orchestra. Cecilia is a violin virtuoso, twenty years old, and she knows exactly that there is only one way out of the institution: being married off. Then a new music teacher arrives \u2014 Antonio Vivaldi \u2014 who puts scores in her hands and opens something in her that she will then have to do something about.<\/p>\n
The orphanage is not invented. The Piet\u00e0 really existed, Vivaldi really taught there for years, and the celebrated all-female orchestra really was one of the musical attractions of eighteenth-century Europe. Cecilia is a fictional character with a real model: Anna Maria della Piet\u00e0, the violinist to whom Vivaldi dedicated twenty-eight concertos. Michieletto insisted that their relationship not become a romance: in the film Vivaldi touches Cecilia exactly once, at the very end, a hand on her shoulder. What binds them is the music, and lack \u2014 both need someone to confirm that they are worth something.<\/p>\n
The film’s most interesting formal decision concerns the music, and the director has stated it precisely: every piece of music performed on screen is Vivaldi, and every piece used as score is contemporary, written by Fabio Massimo Capogrosso. The baroque belongs to the world the characters live in; the modern sound belongs to what Cecilia feels inside, which she is neither permitted to say nor has the words for. Michieletto calls it a risk, but the film has no interest in being a biography: this is not Amadeus, it is the story of two people, one of whom happens to be Vivaldi.<\/p>\n
Michieletto has been one of the most sought-after opera directors in Europe for two decades; Primavera is his first feature. He didn’t attempt it alone: the producers are Nicola Giuliano and Carlotta Calori, who also produce Paolo Sorrentino’s films; the cinematographer is Daria D’Antonio, who shot Sorrentino’s The Hand of God; and the editor is Walter Fasano, Luca Guadagnino’s long-time collaborator. Much of the film was shot in natural light and candlelight with minimal post-production, and there are stretches several minutes long without dialogue, carried entirely by rhythm and image.<\/p>\n
The world premiere was in the Special Presentations section of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025, and the film won the audience award at the Chicago International Film Festival. It has sold to fifty countries and opened in Italian cinemas at Christmas. Tecla Insolia plays Cecilia and Michele Riondino plays Vivaldi, with Stefano Accorsi, Valentina Bell\u00e8, Andrea Pennacchi and Fabrizia Sacchi in support.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Venice, 1716. Inside the Ospedale della Piet\u00e0, the foundling girls receive instrumental training, and visitors come from all over Europe to hear their orchestra. Cecilia is a violin virtuoso, twenty years old, and she knows exactly that there is only one way out of the institution: being married off. Then a new music teacher arrives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n