The Camerata Ama Deus is Vox's chamber orchestra.  Cameratais derived from an Italian word for room or chamber and signifies an orchestra that is smaller than the modern symphony.  Since much of the secular music dating from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods (ca. 16^th to late 18^th centuries) was composed for performance in the rooms of the palaces and chateaus of the nobles who employed the composer and musicians, a chamber orchestra is the appropriately sized ensemble to perform this music.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678 in Venice and died a pauper in Vienna on July 28, 1741.  Antonio was taught violin by his father, Giovanni, who was also a barber.  Father and son toured and performed together, with the boy demonstrating prodigious talent.  In 1703, Antonio was ordained a Catholic priest; and, probably because of his carrot top he earned the nickname of The Red Priest (il Prete Rosso).  Also in 1703, Antonio began a long and sometimes tempestuous relationship with Venice's Devout Hospital of Mercy (Pio Ospedale della Pietà) as its master of violin and later, music director.  The Ospedale was an orphanage that provided abandoned children shelter, education and trade skills.  Antonio's responsibility was to teach the girls a trade as proficient musicians.  Over nearly four decades he composed, for performance by succeeding waves of young ladies, hundreds of technically demanding and artistically superb concertos (defined below) for myriad combinations of solo instruments, as well as many sacred choral works.

Like many Italian composers, Vivaldi wrote for the operatic stage.  Although he claimed to have written nearly 100 operas, the number is probably closer to half that total.  The  Sinfonia No. 1 (defined below) is from his opera seria L'incoronazione di Dario (The Coronation of Darius) which he composed and produced for Venice in January 1717.  Opera seria was a highly structured Baroque form of serious opera in which the heroic lives and exploits of mythical and quasi-mythical historic figures were popular topics.  Vivaldi's opera concerns Persia's King Darius the Great (550 to 486 BCE), whose army was defeated by the Greeks at Marathon (490 BCE) and whose son, Xerxes I, famously received rough treatment at the hands of 300 Spartans ten years later.

Although Vivaldi was successful in the opera arena as both composer and producer, he did not dominate this art form.  It was as a composer of concertos that Antonio Vivaldi established for the ages that he was a master of instrumental technique and artistry, especially for the violin.  The concertos also proved him to be a composer of highly enjoyable and accessible music that was imbued by innovative excellence.  Nonetheless, as with other once popular artists or leaders, Vivaldi's name, fame and music faded from fashion towards the end of his long life.  His "rediscovery" by classical musical audiences didn't come until after World War II.  Although it is fair to say that for the last fifty years or so the musical genius and appeal of Antonio Vivaldi has been firmly reestablished, bear in mind that this artistic truth was obvious almost 300 years ago to no less an authority than Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).  Bach's own incomparable music was influenced by this same Antonio Lucio Vivaldi before suffering its own century of eclipse.

By the way, the "RV-plus-number" that follows each Vivaldi composition stands for the Ryom-Verzeichnis.  Peter Ryom (b. 1937) is the Danish musicologist who undertook the monumental task of cataloguing the hundreds of Vivaldi pieces scattered around Europe, placing them into an orderly form. (Verzeichnis is German for index).  SoPeter Ryom is to Vivaldi what Ludwig von Köchel, of the famous K-numbers, was to Mozart; or Otto Eric Deutsch was to Schubert; or Wolfgang Schmieder was to J.S. Bach.

A concerto is a musical composition featuring a solo instrument (or sometimes two or more) in musical dialogue with a chamber orchestra ensemble.  The word probably was derived from the Latin concertare (to fight or to contend), although another Latin source may have been conserere (to join together or to unite).  Antonio Vivaldi is generally credited with bringing this musical form to its zenith.  Typically, a concerto of the later Baroque era is three movements long, often with a fast - slow - fast pacing; lasts about 10 to 15 minutes; and demonstrates the technical virtuosic capabilities of both the featured solo instrument(s) and the solo performer(s).  The lone sinfonia scheduled for these programs is an example of a form of instrumental composition that often introduced a longer work, such as an opera or a scene.  In this case the sinfonia is from Vivaldi's opera L'incoronazione di Dario.  During the Baroque period, the sinfonia had no fixed compositional style and was one of several terms used to describe compositions with a similar function.  The word itself comes from ancient Greek; it means in unisonor concordant in sound, with foniameaning voice.  As the Baroque era was superseded by the Rococo and early Classic periods (ca. 1725 to 1775), the term symphony evolved and was attached to the larger self-contained and familiar musical compositions of which Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms were masters.