"Il Prete Rosso" - the red priest, Antonio Vivaldi got this nickname because of his red hair. He came to the famous Venetian girls' orphanage Ospedale della Pietà as a young priest and violin teacher. There he also became acquainted with the instrument of the transverse flute, which was new at that time, played at the Ospedale by a girl called "Lucieta traversie". Vivaldi recognised the technical and expressive possibilities of the transverse flute and used it in a wide variety of genres.
With his six Concerti a Flauto traverso, Opus 10, he presented an entire collection of concertos for this new instrument for the first time in 1729. To this end, he reworked earlier concertos for other instruments and added a new concerto to make a very successful collection that was printed in the Netherlands. Like the famous "Seasons", three of the concertos have a programmatic character: Vivaldi combines rhythmic and harmonic elements, for example, to give musical form to the waves in La Tempesta di mare, the chirping in Il Gardellino or the ghosts and sleep in La notte. © Glossa