In 1926, researchers in a monastic boarding school archive in Piedmont found 15 bound volumes of handwritten music that should have been destroyed in the Napoleonic Wars. They held the lost legacy of Antonio Vivaldi. This episode debunks the earthquake myth around his 1678 birth, explains how chronic asthma ended his career saying public Mass, and shows how that dispensation freed him to teach at the Ospedale della Pietà, where he turned orphan girls into a world-class ensemble performing behind ornate metal grilles.

The episode follows Vivaldi's contract to write two new concertos a month, his firing in 1709 and unanimous rehiring in 1711, his career as an impresario at the Teatro Sant'Angelo, and his battle with censors over Arsilda's plot of a woman disguised as a man. It covers Benedetto Marcello's satirical pamphlet, his years in Mantu ...