The Vivaldi Hunters by Michael White. Published November 21, 2004

On the authorship of "Andromeda Liberata", [a] recently rediscovered quasi opera... now a subject of a fierce dispute within the normally quiet world of music scholarship, led by two contestants who could pass for David and Goliath."

"Playing David is Olivier Fourés, a young French dancer and violinist who has turned himself into a serious Vivaldi expert. Traveling around Europe, he acquired an interest in libraries and manuscripts, looking for things he could make use of in performance; and two years ago, in the course of a casual trawl, he happened on the anonymous "Andromeda" manuscript in the library of the conservatory in Venice..."

Also on "that other Vivaldian mystery, the Ospedale della Pietà [where Vivaldi taught and worked].

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/arts/music/21whit.html?oref=login

"Books on the composer usually describe the Pietà as a girls' orphanage, sometimes as a convent, and they almost invariably give the impression that it no longer exists. But they are wrong. And the living proof is a robust, chain-smoking, gruff-voiced Englishwoman, named Micky White (no relation), who opened the place up for me one recent Saturday morning and showed me its treasures.

Ms. White is the Pietà's archivist. She is working on a book about Vivaldi, which, she says, will counter "the garbage people write about him.""

How lovely.