Contents: Introduction; Acknowledgements; Music in Venice: Musical academies in eighteenth-century Venice; Tenors and basses at the Venetian Ospedali; Vivaldi: Vivaldi and the empire; Vivaldi’s Serenatas: long cantatas or short operas?; Vivaldi’s ’Manchester’ sonatas; Vivaldi’s conch concerto; A Vivaldi sonata with obbligato organ in Dresden; Lingua romana in bocca veneziana: Vivaldi, Corelli and the Roman School; Vivaldi and Rome: observations and hypotheses; Vivaldi’s sacred music: the three periods; New light on Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater; Other Venetian Composers: The function and character of the instrumental ritornello in the solo cantatas of Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751); Albinoni’s oboe concertos; The effects of music: Benedetto Marcello’s cantata Il Timoteo; The Marcian motets of Benedetto Vinaccesi; The Taiheg, the Pira and other curiosities of Benedetto Vinaccesi’s Suonate da camera a tre, Op. 1; Addenda and Corrigenda; Index of musical works and collections; Index of names.