Joseph Fiennes ("Elizabeth", "Running with Scissors") will portray the eccentric priest and Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi in a new biopic reports Variety.

Directed by Boris Damast from a script by journalist Steven Freedman, it follows the composer as a young priest assigned to serve as music master of a school for the abandoned, illegitimate daughters of Venice's courtesans.

He bonds with the girls, which leads to his landing a concert of his music before the pope including his most famous composition "The Four Seasons". Freedman has spent more than two decades researching Vivaldi.

Malcolm McDowell, Jacqueline Bisset, Lena Headey and Zuleikha Robinson are also in the cast.