Depardieu and Kingsley rumoured to star in rival flicks about the Baroque composer.

We all know his music, but who knew Vivaldi could make such a compelling subject for two competing feature films, and command such star power to boot?

Shooting is set to start on the first of two big-budget biopics about the Red Priest. Melbourne-educated director Boris Damast will begin filming his historical drama about the composer of The Four Seasons in September in Venice, Hungary, Germany and Bruges, with a cast rumoured to include Gérard Depardieu, Joseph Fiennes, Jacqueline Bisset, Neve Campbell and Alfred Molina. (Depardieu played another unlikely musical protagonist of a film, French viola da gamba player and composer Marin Marais, in Tous les matins du monde.)

Ben Kingsley, Jessica Biel and German-American violinist David Garrett have been put forward as possible stars of a second Vivaldi movie with Mexican director Patricia Riggen at the helm. Her biopic will explore the Italian composer’s internal battle between divine and earthly love, while Damast’s offering takes as its subject Vivaldi’s work with the orphaned girls of the Ospedalle della Pietà. A rather alarming synopsis suggests the Vivaldi of Damast’s film uncovers and thwarts a Venetian prostitution...