Composer Gone Wild? Vivaldi Faces Lurid Spotlight

The life of Vivaldi, the Italian composer best known for The Four Seasons and the Gloria, is music to the ears of authors and Hollywood producers. Two new books and an upcoming movie dwell on the supposedly salacious details of his 18th-century personal life, though at least one researcher thinks it's all hogwash, the Times of London reports.

Nicknamed “the red priest” because of his flaming locks, Vivaldi led an orchestra and chorus of teenage girls at an orphanage. An English researcher working on her own book says it’s nonsense to think Vivaldi, who lived with parents, was anything but appropriate. It would have been his swan song, she said, had the “unconventional genius” dallied with his teenage charges. (More Antonio Vivaldi stories.)