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From princely service to the open market: Singers of Italian opera and their patrons, 1600–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

John Rosselli
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Extract

We are used to thinking of ‘opera singer’ as a profession. But no such profession existed when opera emerged as a genre at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the first public opera house opened in Venice in 1637, or for three or four decades after that: operas were too few to occupy most of anyone's time. In the early seventeenth century not even ‘singer’ was as yet a clearly defined trade. Many singers were also instrumentalists: some accompanied themselves (and some also composed their own music), while others switched between singing and playing; the commonest Italian term for them all was musici. Others again were actors or actresses who could sing, like Virginia Andreini, drafted in an emergency to create the title part in Monteverdi's Arianna of 1608.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 1 - 32
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 The present study is based on research carried out on a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom. I am grateful to Sergio Durante and Margaret McGowan for commenting on an early draft. Part of it was delivered as a paper to the Royal Musical Association conference on ‘Music in the Market Place’, Oxford, 15–17 April 1988. The following abbreviations are used in the notes: ASBO: Archivio di Stato, Bologna; ASMO Mus: Archivio di Stato, Modena, Archivio per Materie, Musici; ASN: Archivio di Stato, Naples; ASR: Archivio di Stato, Rome; ASV: Archivio di Stato, Venice; BNF CV: Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Carteggi Vari; CMBMBO: Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Bologna; BEMO: Biblioteca Estense, Modena; MCCV: Museo Civico Correr, Venice.

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10 Ademollo, A., La bell' Adriana ed altre virtuose del suo tipo alla corte di Mantova (Cittádi Castello, 1888), 89–119, 123. Besides the Viceroy and his wife, the Prince of Stigliano, patron of Adriana's husband, had to be pacifiedGoogle Scholar. Adriana (or Andriana, as she signed herself) was later taken in well-informed quarters to have demonstrated her honestá by holding out against Duke Vincenzo's advances: Crinó, A. M., ‘Virtuose di canto e poeti a Roma e a Firenze nella prima metá del Seicento’, Studi Secenteschi, 1 (1960), 183–4.Google Scholar

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14 Ademollo (see n. 11).

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18 This was the alto Domenico Marchetti, who declined to sing the part of a shepherd in I trionfi d'amore, composed for the Emperor Ferdinand Ill's wedding in 1648 by the deputy musical director of the Imperial Chapel, G. F. Sances. Another priest in the chapel choir, Carlo Procerati, did take part, and priests and even monks sang in a number of mid-seventeenth-century operas: Wellesz, E., ‘Einige handschriftliche Libretti aus der Frühzeit der Wiener Oper’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissensckaft, 1 (1918–1919), 281Google Scholar; Knaus, H., Die Musiker im Archivbestand des Kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (1637–1705), 3 vols. (Vienna, 1967–1969), I, 23, 33; II, 77Google Scholar; von Köchel, L., Die Kaiserliche Hofmusikkapelle in Wien von 1543 bis 1867 (Vienna, 1869), 58–60.Google Scholar; For castrato monks who sang in opera, see Rosselli, J., ‘The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550–1850’, Acta Musicologica, 60 (1988), 149–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See Bianconi, and Walker, (n. 3), and ‘Dalla Finta Pazza alia Veremonda: Storie di Febiarmonici’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 10 (1974)Google Scholar; and Piperno, F., ‘Il sistema produttivo, fino al 1780’, in Bianconi, L. and Pestelli, G., eds., Storia dell'opera italiana, 6 vols. (Turin, 1987– ), IV, 3–75.Google Scholar

20 Claudio Monteverdi to Alessandro Striggio, 24 July 1627, in Monteverdi, C., Lettere, dediche e prefazioni, ed. De Paoli, D. (Rome, 1973), 267. There may have been a touch of malice in Monteverdi's account: he bore a justified grudge against the Mantuan court for having worked him hard and paid him late. But there is no reason to doubt its truth. Francesco Manelli and his wife sang in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Venice, 1641).Google Scholar

21 Ademollo (see n. 10).

22 Ferrero, M. Viale, ‘Repliche a Torino di melodrammi veneziani’, in Muraro, M. T, ed., Venezia e il melodramma nel Seicento (Florence, 1976), 148, 159–64. The other singer was Francesco Rascarino.Google Scholar

23 Queen Christina to D'Alibert, 7 March 1668, quoted in A. Ademollo, ‘Le avventure di una cantante al tempo di Innocenzo XI’, L'Opinione (Rome), 28 July 1880. This castrato, Antonio Rivani, had already left Florence in 1653 without the consent of his patron, Cardinal Gian Carlo Medici, who wrote to the Duke of Mantua to get him back: Pruniéres (see n. 2), 244 (note).

24 Nicola Paris to the Margrave, 1 February 1697, in Mersmann, H., Beiträge zur Ansbacher Musikgescbicbte (Leipzig, 1916), 28. The rival singer was Carlo Landriani.Google Scholar

25 Giuseppe Chiarini to the Duke of Savoy, 26 November 1666, quoted in Bouquet, M.-T., Musique et musiciens á Turin de 1648 á 1775 (Turin, 1968), 168–9.Google Scholar

26 Termini, O., ‘singers at San Marco in Venice: The Competition between Church and Theatre (c. 1675–c. 1725)’, RMA Research Chronicle, 17 (1981), 67, 69–71.Google Scholar

27 Fenlon, I., Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1980), I, 110, 190.Google Scholar

28 Prunières (see n. 2), 86–94.

29 Bianconi and Walker, ‘Dalla Finta Pazza’ (see n. 19), 444; Ferrero (see n. 22). That Venice theatre owners like the Grimani aimed at a mixture of profit and prestige has generally been assumed: ‘almost more as a business than for hospitality's sake’ [quasi piúper negotio cheper trattenimento] was the phrase used by the nephew of the Papal Nuncio, who was in Venice, 1647–52: Molmenti, P., Venezia alla metà del secolo XVII: Relazione inedita di Mgr Francesco Pannocchiescbi (Rome, 1916), 205Google Scholar. Confirmation of the profit motive comes from a more workaday source, the steward to the governor (podestá) of Padua, who reported the success of a new opera at the Grimani-controlled Teatro San Luca and his own satisfaction that the family would not have to stand a loss on the current season (n'ho sodisfasione per I'interesse da chá Grimani, che da questo hanno non n'haverano il discapito figurato): Antonio Benado (Benato) to Giovanni Michieli, 4 February 1693/94, MCCV MSS PD C1077 c. 181. Cf. Mangini, N., I teatri di Venezia (Milan, 1974), 30–1.Google Scholar

30 di Pamparato, S. Cordero, ‘Un duca di Savoia impresario teatrale e i casi della musica Diana’, Rivista musicale italiana, 45 (1941), 240–60. This was in 1693–95.Google Scholar

31 Cardinal Grimani to the Duke of Modena, 1708–9, ASMO Mus b. 2. The soprano was Francesco De Grandis. The cardinal also arranged to borrow the duke's scene designer Tommaso Bezzi, but later chose to stick to the usual arrangements whereby Bezzi divided his time between Modena and the Grimani theatres in Venice.

32 Giovanni Antonio Cavagna to Marco Faustini (impresario of the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice), 3 April, 16 May, 27 July, 20 October 1665, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco b. 188 c. 85, 98, 125, 208; cf. Vincenzo Dini to Faustini, 1665, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco, b. 188 c. 52, 218, b. 194 c. 137.

33 Bouquet (see n. 25) 81–2, 176–9. Bouquet's reading ‘Veneria’ – a place near Turin – for Cavagnino's location in Carnival 1667 should clearly be ‘Venezia‘. The Milan affair in summer 1666 is somewhat obscure: Cavagnino was being denied the title part of Annibale in favour of the tenor Lesma, also from Turin, and alleged that the reputation he had won in the Duke's service was at stake.

34 Pruniéres (see n. 2), 152–5, 172–3; Francesco Folchi to Cesare d‘Este (a member of the Modena ducal family), no date (but late seventeenth century), ASMO Mus b. l/B; G. B. Nini to Padre Livrani, 7 January 1690, ASMO Mus b. 2.

35 Carlo Righenti (Righenzi) to Faustini, 7 October 1665, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco b. 188 c. 53–54.

36 Pietro Metastasio to the Princess of Belmonte, 18 May 1750, in Metastasio, P., Tutte le opere, ed. Brunelli, B., 5 vols. (Milan, 1953), III, 520Google Scholar. Monticelli was then the leading singer at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples; he had previously spent some years as a member of the Imperial Chapel in Vienna, and was an Austrian subject.

37 For example, Carlo Antonio Riccardi to the Duke of Modena's secretary, 23 June 1674 (his employer the Duke of Parma was making difficulties about giving him leave to sing at Modena).

38 Roberto Papafava to the Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany, 30 May 1693, in Puliti, L., ‘Cenni storici della vita del serenissimo Ferdinando dei Medici, Gran Principe di Toscana’, Atti dell'Accademia del R. Istituto Musicale di Firenze (Florence, 1874), 50–1Google Scholar; Pietro Benigni to the Duke of Modena's secretary, May 1691, ASMO Mus b. 2; Nicolo Donnamaria to [?], 21 April 1748, BEMO MSS Campori App. 2447 (soliciting a request from the authorities at Mantua to safeguard Caffarelli's salary from the Naples royal chapel).

39 Francesco Zanchi to Faustini, 23 August 1654, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco b. 188 c. 14 (breaks off negotiations for a carnival opera season because of failure to agree on payment dates).

40 Brunelli, B., ‘L'impresario in angustie’, Rivista italiana del dramma, 5 (1941), 331–3.Google Scholar

41 Knaus (see n. 18), II, 9, 10, 23, 27, 42–3; III, 45, 140–1.

42 Brunelli (see n. 40), 319–28.

43 Notes by Giustino Martinoni on the singers at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, in 1663, quoted in Mamy, S., introduction to A. Zeno, D. Lolli and G. Giacomelli, La Merope, Drammaturgia musicale veneta, 18 (Milan, 1984), xv.Google Scholar; These priorities changed slowly. In 1728 Count Alessandro Zambeccan, a Bolognese nobleman, could discuss two women singers wholly in terms of beauty and ‘spirit’ three years later he first discussed Bianca Stabile's voice, and only then went on to describe her as ‘aged 22, very courteous, tall, with a shapely waist, thin rather than fat’: to his brother Francesco, 30 June 1728, 24 October 1731, Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, MSS 92/II/18. By 1751 the impresario of the San Carlo, Naples, opined that in a company of singers at least one of the women must be ‘an object not unsightly’: Croce, B., I teatri diNapoli, 1st version (Naples, 1891), 437.Google Scholar

44 Bianconi and Walker, ‘Dalla Finta Pazza (see n. 19), 440–4; much further information in Ademollo, A., ‘La Giorgina’, Fanfulla della domenica, 1881, no. 49Google Scholar; Croce (see n. 43), 168, 175–80, 191, 201–3, 207–10, 218, 222 (note); Prota-Giurleo, U., I teatri di Napoli nel Seicento (Naples, 1962), 293–303Google Scholar. The brief career of the Roman ‘singer’ Vittoria or Tolla di Bocca di Leone ran to a great deal of adventure (including an attempt by a jealous nobleman to disfigure her) but little actual singing; Costanza Maccari, who sang in Adrasto at Prince Bonelli's on 8 January 1702, had been disfigured a year or so earlier: Valesio, F., Diario di Roma 1700–1742, ed. Scano, G., 6 vols. (Milan, 1977–1979), I, 14, 72, 93, 341, 385; II, 21.Google Scholar

45 A tenor (Giovanni Ripa or Francesco Sandali?) in the cast of Galuppi's Arianna e Teseo (Teatro San Benedetto, Venice, Carnival 1769) played, with great success, the violin obbligato to an aria sung by the prima donna, Anna De Amicis (the first violinist having demanded an exorbitant fee), but this was regarded as an unusual and surprising feat: G. M. Ortes to J. A. Hasse, 31 December 1768, MCCV Cod. Cicogna 2658 no. 164.

46 Weaver, R. L and Weaver, N. W, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater 1590–1750 (Detroit, 1978), 41, 62–9, 71Google Scholar; Durante, S., ‘Cantanti per Reggio (1696–1717): Note sul rapporto di dipendenza’, in Davoli, S., ed., Civilta teatrale e Settecento emiliano (Bologna, 1986), 301–7, and ‘Il cantante’, in Storia dell'opera italiana (see n. 19), IV, 364–7.Google Scholar

47 To the Duke of Modena's secretary from Faustino Donalli, Reggio 6 October 1683 (recommending Barbara Cantoni), from Antonio Gianettini, 29 January, 5 February 1689, ASMO Mus b. l/B; ‘Nota di musici’, Rome 3 December 1697, ASMO Mus b. 3.

48 Cordero di Pamparato (see n. 30), 240–60 (where the story is told confusedly, but with enough evidence from the Turin archives to make it possible to work out the interpretation just given). Even when Diana (sometimes known as Aurelia or Oreglia) and Averara returned to Turin in 1695 they ended, in unclear circumstances, by taking an engagement at the fashionable Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice, in Carnival 1696: Ferrero (see n. 22), 169–70.

49 Cosentino, G., La Mignatta: Maria Maddalena Musi, cantatrice bolognese famosa, 1669–1751 (Bologna, 1930), 25–6, 112–13, 115–19, 122–4, 127–8.Google Scholar

50 Bianconi and Walker (see n. 3), 274–82; Sartori (see n. 12), 456–7. At an unspecified date this duke, Ferdinand Charles, offered the singer Clarice Gigli the choice of four possible arrangements, all of them entailing his ‘protection’ (from which she could withdraw only on pain of his ‘indignation’) and ranging from full-time actual service at Mantua (without theatre engagements) to freedom to live in Florence and contract whatever theatre engagements she chose, subject to the Duke's approval: Durante, S., ‘Alcune considerazioni sui cantanti di teatro del primo Settecento e la loro formazione’, in Bianconi, and Morelli, G., eds., Antonio Vivaldi. Teatro musicale, cultura e societá (Florence, 1982), 437 (note).Google Scholar

51 Patent issued to Maria Maddalena Pieri, 13 May 1721, ASMO Mus b. l/B (this and later patents in this archive are passport-like documents, similar in wording to actual passports issued in the 1690s to singers who really were on the establishment, e.g. G. B. Franceschini, G. B. Sacchi, Giuseppe Galloni; whereas a patent issued to an earlier singer, Ottavia Monteneri [18 May 1688, ASMO Mus b. 2], entitles her to ‘all those honours and prerogatives enjoyed by our other present servants’); Roncaglia, G., ‘La musica alia Corte Estense dal 1707 alia costituzione del Regno d'ltalia’, Atti e memorie della Deputazione diStoria Patriaperle antiche province modenesi, ser. 10, I (1966), 259–77.Google Scholar

52 Minutes of letters from the Duke's secretary to Siface, 24 June 1686, to Antonio Alamanni (Monteneri's husband), 7 July 1689, to the Duke, no date, from Origoni, 6 September 1690, ASMO Mus b. 2. There was a question whether Manzi should go to Milan or Bologna; the Governor of Milan had declined to enter into the matter, so as Manzi preferred Bologna and Origoni wished to have him there as a colleague it would be advisable to give him his preference. Origoni himself wrote that he was at the Duke's disposal as he had no engagements for the coming carnival – suggesting that he could usually choose his own, at least at that season.

53 Extract of letter from Milan, 22 November 1713, ASMO Mus b. 2; Kirkendale, U., ‘Antonio Caldara – la vita’, Chigmna, n. s. 6–7 (1969–1970), 248–9, 254, 255–6, 265Google Scholar; W. Dean, 'scarabelli‘, The New Grove.

54 Durante (see n. 46) (in 1696–1701 nearly all those who sang in opera at Reggio were billed as dependents of rulers, in 1710–17 only about a third); Weaver and Weaver (see n. 46), 266. Cf. other evidence of decorative titles of dependence in Walker, F., ‘A Chronology of the Life and Works of Nicola Porpora’, Italian Studies, 6 (1951), 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lindgren, L., ‘La carriera di Gaetano Berenstadt, contralto evirato, ca. 1690–1735’, Rivista italiana dimusicologia, 19 (1984), 47.Google Scholar

55 Strohm, R., ‘Aspetti sociali dell'opera italiana del primo Settecento’, Musical/Realtá, 2 (1981), 126–7.Google Scholar

56 Croce, B., Un prelato e una cantante nel secolo XVIII (Bari, 1946), 41–3, 52–3, 62, 69Google Scholar; von Dittersdorf, K., Autobiography (New York, 1970), 16–25.Google Scholar

57 Count Francesco Zambeccari to his brother, Milan 14 January 1733, in Frati, L., ‘Un impresario teatrale del Settecento e la sua bibhoteca’, Rivista musicale italiana, 18 (1911), 78.Google Scholar

58 Cavicchi, A., ‘Inediti nell'epistolario Vivaldi-Bentivoglio’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 1 (1967), 51, 62–3, 74–5Google Scholar; [illegible] to Marquis Cosimo Riccardi, Faenza 24 April 1723, BEMO MSS Campori App. 2447 (asks him to get Maria Giustina Turcotti's protector Giuliano Olivieri to persuade her to fulfil an engagement at Faenza).

59 From Guicciardi, 17 May 1729, ASMO Mus b. 1/B.

60 Teresa Bolognini Fontana to Padre G. B Martini, Turin 27 September 1752, quoted in Durante, , ‘Ii cantante’, Storia dell'opera italiana (see n. 19), IV, 379–80Google Scholar. Cf. Rosselli (see n. 18), 161–9.

61 To Padre Martini from Antonio Rossi, 23 December 1762, from Padre Francesco Antonio Vallotti, 12 August 1762, 25 February, 17 December 1763, CMBMBO 1.3.7, 1.8.28, 30, 36. Vallotti recognised the pressures on young members of his choir at the great pilgrimage church of S. Antonio in Padua even while trying to stand out against their seeking opera engagements. At another great pilgrimage church, that of Loreto, opera engagements (as a rule in nearby towns) were regularly though not invariably authorised: Grimaldi, F., Cantori maestri organisti della Cappella musicale di Loreto nei secoli XVII–XIX (Loreto, 1982).Google Scholar

62 Bartolomeo Nucci to Padre Martini, 20 May 1774, CMBMBO 1.3.165.

63 G. M. Ortes to J. A. Hasse, 30 January 1768, MCCV Cod. Cicogna 2658 no. 146.

64 To Padre Martini from Giuseppe M. Giardini, 8 February 1751, from Gaetano Guadagni, 7 February 17[?], CMBMBO 1.23.76, 1.4.65.

65 Croce (see n. 43), 321.

66 Croce (see n. 43), 215.

67 Count Francesco Zambeccari to his brother, Naples 2 March 1729, in Frati, L., ‘Antonio Bernacchi e la sua scuola di canto’, Rivista musicale italiana, 21 (1922), 478–9.Google Scholar

68 Deputazione dei Pubblici Spettacoli to King of Naples, 22 March, 3, 6 November 1802, ASN Casa Reale Antica, Teatri e Feste Pubbliche i. 1269 fasc. 17, 27, 65, 82, 86, 110.

69 See Rosselli, J., The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi. The Role of the Impresario (Cambridge, 1984), 81–99.Google Scholar

70 ‘Eine Selbstbiographie der Sängerin Gertrud Elisabeth Mara’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 10 (1875), cols 545–7, 549–50, 561, 565, 577Google Scholar; Landon, H. C. Robbins, Haydn: Chronicle and Works (London, 1976–1980), IV: Haydn at Eszterhdza, 55 (note). The events referred to occurred in 1771 and 1776.Google Scholar

71 Figures worked out from the detailed information in Robbins Landon, 70–82, show the median length of stay for men singers between 1768 and 1790 as two years ten and a half months, for women singers as two years two months. Italian or Italianised singers generally contracted for two or three years, often left or were dismissed within a few months or a year or so, but sometimes stayed on for four or five years. Some, mainly German, singers stayed on much longer; among the few long-serving Italians (over eleven years each) were Haydn's mistress Luigia Polzelli and the tenor Benedetto Bianchi, the one Prince Esterhazy had flogged early in his engagement. Mediocrity probably accounted for both.

72 To Leopoldo Trapassi, 9 February 1767, in Metastasio (see n. 36), 527.

73 Strohm (see n. 55).

74 Domenico Rodimonti to Giacomo Carissimi, 19 March 1639, in Culley, T., ‘The Influence of the German College in Rome on Music in German-Speaking Countries during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Analecta musicologica, 8–9 (1969–1970), II, 46–7.Google Scholar

75 The market for singers, attitudes to contract and the movement towards the application of economic liberalism between 1780 and 1880 are dealt with in Rosselli (see n. 69), 109–29.

76 Fabbri, P. and Verti, R., Due secoli di teatro per musica a Reggio Emilia. Repertorio cronologico delle opere e dei balli 1645–1857 (Reggio Emilia, 1987).Google Scholar

77 Brumana, B. and Pascale, M., ‘Il teatro musicale a Perugia nel Settecento: Una cronologia dai libretti’, Universitá di Perugiá, Facolt´ di Lettere e Filosofia, Esercizi. Arte–musica–spettacolo, 6 (1983), 71–134.Google Scholar

78 Ricci, C., I teatri di Bologna (Bologna, 1888), 95–7Google Scholar. Others (not ‘among the best’) asked between 20 and 40 doble. Musi, who asked 500, was described as ‘best of all’.

79 Sartori (see n. 12), 459.

80 Antonio Vandini to Padre Martini, 21 January 1738, CMBMBO 1.23.111 (the court of Brandenburg was looking for a female soprano at slightly less than 700 florins a year).

81 The musico Marzio, a priest, complained in 1665 that in order to live he was having to pledge his instalments of salary in advance to Jewish moneylenders at 30 or 40 per cent discount, because his provisioni had never been paid, despite many requests. Though the terminology of the time is confusing (provisione was sometimes used to mean ‘salary’, more commonly salario or onorario), here the word does seem to mean an allowance in cash. On 15 July 1693 the musical director Antonio Gianettini begged for the musicians to be paid their arrears so that they could buy provisions while these were cheap: ASMO Mus l/B (where Marzio is identified, almost certainly erroneously, as Marzio Erculei). Monetisation of allowances may explain certain discrepancies in recorded payments to still earlier musicians, e.g. to the singer Tarquinia Molza at Ferrara in 1583 and to the composer Giaches de Wert at Mantua c. 1586–96: Newcomb (see n. 4), 184, 187; Fenlon (see n. 27), 192–5.

82 Antolini, B. M., ‘La camera di cantante e compositore di Loreto Vittori’, Studi musicali, 7 (1978), 149Google Scholar; Bianconi and Walker (see n. 12), 417–18. (Regalo, again confusingly, could also be used of a single fee paid in cash.)

83 Murata, M., ‘Il Carnevale a Roma sotto Clemente IX’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 12 (1977), 91–2Google Scholar; Bouquet (see n. 25), 71–3 (payments made in 1668 in Rome for the opera La comica del cielo – with a libretto written, before his election, by the Pope – and in 1671 and 1673 at Turin).

84 Metastasio (see n. 36), 932, 980, 1085. Borrero, C. Morales, Fiestas reales en el reinado de Fernando VI (Madrid, 1972), 41, 43. The new libretto was that for Nitteti (1755).Google Scholar

85 Ricci (see n. 78), Teatro Malvezzi, 1694. Cf. Rosselli (see n. 69), 11–12. Occasional payment of singers in the use of theatre boxes (which they could then let to opera goers) in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was really a way of involving them in the management as speculative partners who invested their efforts and hoped to recoup a sufficient sum: it could be involuntary (as when the Grimani family used this device to pay off their debt to various members and suppliers of the company at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo in years of financial crisis for Venice, 1686–96) or voluntary, as when Lucrezia Baldini contracted to have her fee of 100 zecchini for singing at Brescia in Carnival 1730 insured through her having the disposal of boxes up to that amount (l'impresario si obliga assicurarli il suo regallo in tantifitti de'palchi a elecione delta medema): Giazotto, R., ‘La guerra dei palchi’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 1 (1967), II, 494–7Google Scholar; contract between Lucrezia Baldini and the impresario Pietro Navaglia, 6 October 1729, ASV Avogaria di Comun Misc. Civile 4099/352/13.

86 ‘stabilimento fatto con la signora Girolama per la sua venuta in Venetia’, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco b. 188 c. 22 (fee of 100 doble is approximately equivalent to 300 Roman scudi (Sc); travelling expenses Sc. 100; living expenses in Venice Sc. 25 a month for a carnival season of about two months). Cf. rather similar proportions in the arrangements proposed in 1666 to another Roman singer, Giulia Masotti: Mangini (see n. 29), 60; and, in 1768, to the Modena singer Antonio M. Giuliani for a season at Copenhagen - a trip from Modena to Copenhagen may by then have been about as difficult and expensive as a trip from Rome to Venice a century earlier: Pietro Martelli to Giuliani, 5 May 1768, BEMO MSS Campori App. 2447.

87 Paolo Rolli advised Senesino (Francesco Bernardi) on 23 January 1729 that a fee of £1,000 for a London season would, without a benefit or travelling expenses, put a leading singer out of pocket: Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena, Autografi Porri f. XXVI no. 4.

88 ‘Nota di spese fatte dall'impresario Antonio Mango per servizio del Teatro Capranica nell'anno 1732’, Archivio Storico Capitolino, Rome, Fondo Capranica 538/a; Croce (see n. 43), 493.

89 Weaver and Weaver (see n. 46), 36–7; Valle, G., Cenni teorico-pratici sulle aziende teatrali (Milan, 1823), 76–81Google Scholar; G. B. Bonola to Alessandro Lanari, 10 February 1848, BNF CV 349/106.

90 Verti, R., ‘The Indice de' teatrali spettacoli, Milan, Venice, Rome 1764–1823: Preliminary Research on a Source for the History of Italian Opera’, Periodica musica, 3 (1985), 1–7. For professional agents generally, Rosselli (see n. 69), 135–52.Google Scholar

91 Abate Vincenzo Grimani to [Polo Michiel], 23 March, 27 April, 6, 17 July 1675, MCCV MSS PD C1062 c. 348, 394, 481 (the castrato was Giorgio Corazzi, a soprano, pupil of Foggia, then singing at S. Lorenzo in Damaso).

92 Carlo Mazzini to Faustini, 12 December 1665, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco b. 188 c. 373 (names twelve days as the time taken by lettiga [chaise]). Figures for the 1840s derived from post times in the correspondence of Alessandro Lanari in BNF CV. Charles Burney in 1770 took a total of eight days and nine nights over the same route, including two overnight stops but excluding longer stays in Bologna and Florence: Poole, H. E, ed., Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, 1770 (London, 1969).Google Scholar

93 Faustini's contracts with singers, all dating from the 1650s and 1660s, ASV Scuola Grande di S. Marco b. 188 c. 22, 204, b. 194 c. 12, 28, 29, 32, 40; Mangini (see n. 29), 60. The briefest and least explicit contracts seem to have been those made with singers already based in Venice – friends of the impresario with (at that time) no rival carnival seasons to go to.

94 Contracts between Lucrezia Baldini and Antonio Vivaldi (for Teatro S. Angelo, Venice, Carnival 1727), in Degrada, F. and Muraro, M. T, eds., Antonio Vivaldi. Da Venezia all'Europa (Milan, 1978), 82Google Scholar, and between her and P. Navaglia, 1730 (see n. 85); between the impresario Carlo Buttelli and the singer Mario Bondichi, 23 December 1732 (for a season of puppet opera at the Teatro dei Granari di S. Agnese, Rome, Carnival 1732) and between the impresario Giuseppe Polvini Faliconti and Scipione Coccetti, 8 April 1732 (for the lease of the Teatro Pace, Rome), ASR Tribunale Civile del Governatore b. 265, cedulae et iura diversa, Notai del Tribunale del Governatore (notaio Giuseppe M. Grilli) b. 15 c. 163r–165v, 192r–193r. The latter contract was still imprecise on one point: the rent was still to be paid if government action stopped the season for no more than ‘three or four‘ performances.

95 Contracts for seasons in 1754 and 1755 between the owners of the Teatro del Cocomero, Florence, and the singers Domenico and Anna De Amicis, Archivio Storico del Comune di Firenze, Accademia degli Infuocati f. 8371; printed contract forms of 1767 in BEMO MSS Campori App. 2447, of 1780s in ASV Inquisitori di Stato b. 914, ASN Casa Reale Antica f. 965–971.

96 Examples of guarantees demanded by Giulia Masotri in 1666, Brunelli (see n. 40), 331, and by Roberto Stagno for Buenos Aires in 1888, Stagno to Carlo d'Ormeville, 27 January 1888, Museo Teatrale alia Scala, Coll. Casati 1087; cf. Rosselli (see n. 69), 126. The appeal to a nobleman, one of the Pepoli of Bologna, was to be made by the composer G. B. Mazza in 1738 against the Faenza impresario: the bass, he wrote, had managed to get paid through the influence of a leading Faenza nobleman, but the impresario had now taken himself and his property into sanctuary in a church: to Padre Martini, 16 February 1738, CMBMBO 1.23.99.

97 Giazotto, R., ‘Guerra dei palchi’, pt 3, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 3 (1969), 929–32Google Scholar. A similar device at Modena was the withholding of the Duke's subsidy till the end of the season: Giuseppe Principe di Colobrano to the impresario Nicola Latronica, 22 December 1767, BEMO MSS Campori App. 2447. It is however clear from accounts of sums owed to a company engaged for a failed opera season at Venice sometime in the 1760s that leading singers still managed to get paid a much higher proportion of what was owed them than lesser creditors: ASV Inquisitori di Stato b. 914, untitled fasc.

98 Croce (see n. 43), 373–85, 445–8, 517, 564, 603–4, 701–2. I have slightly simplified the contrast between the requirements of opera buff a and those of opera seria: singing ability in opera buff a did matter, and the ‘serious parts’ often written into it could be exacting: see Piperno, F., ‘Buffe e buffi (considerazioni sulla professionals degli interpreti di scene buffe ed intermezzi)‘, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 18 (1982), 241–84.Google Scholar

99 ‘Eine Selbstbiographie’ (see n. 70), cols. 596, 609.

100 Il Palcoscenico, 30 September 1848, quoted in 100 anni di vita del Teatro San Carlo 1848–1948 (Naples, 1948), 184–5.

101 Ademollo, A., La piú famosa delle cantanti italiane della seconda metá del secolo XVIII (Caterina Gabrielli) (Milan, 1890)Google Scholar; Vianello, C., Teatri, spettacoli, musiche a Milano nei secoli scorsi (Milan, 1941), 193–5Google Scholar; Metastasio to Farinelli, 24 April 1757, in Metastasio (see n. 36), 6–7 (the proposal for Madrid was that Gabrielli should for a time be known technically as a virtuosa di camera or virtuosa in servizio to the King and Queen because another singer was under contract as prima donna of the theatre). For Cuzzoni: Deutsch, O. E, ed., Handel, a Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 237.Google Scholar

102 Metastasio to Farinelli, 23 September 1758, in Metastasio (see n. 36), 68–9; Burney, C., A General History of Music, ed. Mercer, F., 2 vols. (London, 1935), II, 881–2Google Scholar; The Early Diary of Fanny Burney, 1768–1778, ed. Ellis, A. R, 2 vols. (London, 1907), II, 115.Google Scholar

103 To Padre Martini from Gaetano Guadagni, 23 January 1774, from Placido Mazzafera, 17 September 1779, CMBMBO 1.4.62, 1.14.172.

104 The post-1814 Modena court had two court singers, both men, and just once used one of them in an opera composed for the court theatre: Roncaglia (see n. 51), 275–6; Tardini, V., I teatri di Modena, 3 vols. (Modena, 1898–1902)Google Scholar, III, s.v. Federico Fedi, Lodovico Verri, Alfonso Pareschi, Paolo Borgetti.

105 G. Strepponi to Avvocato Maestri, 3 January 1843, BEMO MSS Campori App. 2447.

106 Pietro Camuri to Alessandro Lanari, 29 November 1823, BNF CV 352/106 (reporting answer from Isabella Fabbrica's father to an offer for the Teatro La Pergola, Florence, for spring 1824).

107 Francesco Piccoli to Padre Martini, 29 April 1766, CMBMBO 1.9.7.

108 Ehrlich, C., The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), 76–9Google Scholar, and, for other evidence of overcrowding in the Italian profession by the late eighteenth century; Degrada, F., ‘L'opera napoletana’, in Storia dell'opera, ed. Basso, A., 6 vols. (Turin, 1977), I, 260.Google Scholar