First Friday Book Club | The Instrumentalist by Harriett Constable

The Instrumentalist is the story of one woman’s irrepressible ambition and rise to the top, of loss and triumph, and of who we choose to remember and leave behind on the path to success. Antonio Vivaldi served as violin director at an orphanage in Venice from 1703 to 1715. His students were orphan girls left in a hole in the wall of the orphanage, run by nuns, some of whom went on to become part of an extraordinary orchestra. In Harriett Constable’s deeply researched work, inspired by true events, she looks at Anna Maria, a violin prodigy, who at the age of eight became Vivaldi’s star pupil.

From the jewelled palaces of Venice to its mud-licked canals, this is a story of Anna Maria, obsessive and gifted, who is on a mission to become Venice’s greatest violinist and composer, and in her remarkable world of colour and sound, it seems like nothing with stop her.

Join The Friends for another morning of lively discussion.