Giovanni Battista Vivaldi ran a barber shop in the late sixteen hundreds Venice, he was also a talented amateur violinist. He had two sons and three daughters who, by a strange twist of genetics, all had flaming red hair and great talent for music. This story is about his sons: Antonio Lucio and Francesco Gaetano. The boys learned to play various instruments but also received advanced musical education: composition, counterpoint, harmony, orchestration and were actively composing music since they were teenagers. Antonio, a gregarious extrovert, easily made friends and enemies. Francesco was shy and spoke very little. Antonio managed to get a publisher to sell his music earning money and a growing recognition. His brother, who was also a barber, wrote mostly for woodwind, and had Antonio sign and sell his works for him. One of Francesco's oboe pieces, the Largo movement from his Concerto in C Major, was lifted by Ann Ronell in 1932 to become the jazz standard "Willow Weep for Me".
Antonio became music director at the Ospedale della Pieta which he turned into a center of musical excellence. Early in the eighteenth century, the Opera craze hit Venice and Antonio couldn't pass-up the chance of making serious coin. Dozens of theatres were staging opera to satisfy the public's growing appetite and Antonio ended up composing more than fifty operas (almost all of them crap). He joined up with the other Venetian giant of the time, Carlo Goldoni, for a sure hit: the opera "Griselda", but when they submitted it to the censors, it was rejected for moral turpitude (Goldoni overdid it and had Constanza, a woman, fall in love with Griselda, another woman). Goldoni and Vivaldi had a horrible fight blaming each other and never spoke again.
About 1740 Antonio was invited to Vienna by Emperor Charles VI to become his Court Composer. Alas, shortly after his arrival Charles died and Antonio found himself without a job, without a sponsor and without much money. He fell ill an died a year later almost destitute (the money he left barely covered the cost of a decent funeral).
Back home, brother Francesco was cutting hair and still composing. Every now and then he would take his pieces to Antonio's publisher pretending that he found more music left behind by his bro. When Francesco found the "Griselda" manuscript, he took it to Goldoni to change it so it will pass censorship. Goldoni resolved the issue: Griselda was disguised as a man which proved good enough for the censors. "Griselda" was staged at Teatro Sant'Angelo at a huge success. The interest was helped along by somebody who wrote in bright red paint on the poster "Has Griselda a Penis?" Everybody suddenly wanted to see the Griselda Penis Opera. It ran for astonishing fifty-six weeks.
Francesco made money of it but still maintained the barber shop. He was composing small oboe pieces to play them with family and friends. Sometimes asked himself if Griselda was really a man after all, and did it have a penis.
