Cantrice, Castrati e otre Bestie - Part III

The Rival Queens - Part I

The history of opera is riff with stories of rivalries between singers - male and female - though often those frictions are more in the minds of their supporters than of the favourites they champion.  Several modern day (i.e. late 20th century) examples spring to mind - rather disappointingly today the majority of operatic stars vow undying love for their peers and colleagues in syrupy air-kissy intermission features on High Definition broadcasts that make one long for the days of Maria Callas and her infamous comparison of her voice to Renata Tebaldi's.**

Gone are the days of a *Nellie Melba sailing through the red velvet curtains after pushing aside a young Giovanni Martinelli as the audience chanted his name with the remark that her dear public wanted their "Auntie Nellie".  Or the even more heady events of 6 June 1727 during a performance of Bononcini’s Astianatte when a battle royal or rather a battle before the royals broke out between the fans of the two reigning queens of song at Handel's Royal Academy of Music.

As an astounded Princess Caroline looked on Francesa Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni are reported to have heaped insults, in Italian, on each other and finally resorted to pulling each others hair as their adoring fans egged them on with catcalls, cheers and other "indecencies".  According to the local press the disheveled prime donne were escorted off stage, several of the audience arrested and the performance - and the opera season - was suspended.   There is sufficient proof that the press may have exaggerated the events of the battling donne (imagine our surprise!!!) and that the cause of the major disturbance were more the actions of  their devoted followers than the two singers themselves.  The Cuzzonists were led by Lady Pembroke who it is said encouraged her entourage to hiss Faustina.  This led to a satirical verse making the rounds of the town:

UPON LADY PEMBROKE’S PROMOTING

THE CAT-CALLS OF FAUSTINA.

Old poets sing that beasts did dance 

Whenever Orpheus play’d, 

So to Faustina’s charming voice 

Wise Pembroke’s asses bray’d.

In fact the two ladies were considered the "best of enemies" and there is a possibility that behind the scenes they were on cordial if not sisterly terms.   The Royal Academy was not the first stage they had shared and, thought the concept was new for the London opera scene, it was not unknown in an Italy house to have two prime donne in the same opera.  There is also the very good possibility that the directors of the Royal Academy manipulated the situation to sell tickets for their often financially troubled company.

A playbill from 1747 for Lee's popular tragedy which
had pitted rival actresses against each other on the
English stage since 1677.  The same story had served
Paolo Antonio Rolli as the inspiration for his Alessandro
which featured the two "Rival Queens" of opera twenty
years earlier.

Cuzzoni and Bordoni first shared the London stage in Handel's Alessandro; the argument of which was well-known to English playgoers as the subject of Nathaniel Lee's popular and oft-revived 1677 tragedy The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great - a popular vehicle for rival actresses.   And a source had been feeding the press and public curiosity with stories of backstage intrigue and tensions for several weeks before the prima.   The occasion itself passed without incident - the only fireworks being the vocal ones on stage.  Handel had provided music of equal brilliance for each of them.  He had made sure that both roles were of equal length and wrote one short duet (Placa l'alma) for the two of them.  He knew Cuzzoni's abilities and style well but based Faustina's music on what he knew of her previous repertoire.  Later he was to replace two of her arias with music that he felt exploited her abilities more completely.

Their joint appearance was a great success and the coffers of the Royal Academy were filled by a public that began to clamour for tickets to see the "Rival Queens".  After that first overwhelming triumph the city waited impatiently to see what Handel, Bononcini and company were going to create for the two of them.   And they were not to be disappointed: Handel wrote five works that featured the two divas.  It must not have been an easy task as he had to pay particular attention to who got what to sing, when they got to sing it and with whom.  And the abilities and demands of the great castrato Senesino had to be considered - Francesco Bernardi, the third member of Handel's "dream team",  was not know to give up centre stage easily.  It was a delicate balancing act.

The "rivalry" continued in the 1727-28 season however when Bordoni was offered a salary that was one guinea more than Cuzzoni for the next season  the soprano reacted to the insult by almost immediately packing her bags and returning to the continent. The financially troubled company hoped the affair would soon be forgotten but they had not such luck.   That same season John Gay's The Beggar's Opera opened and Handel's bickering divas were immortalized as the back-biting heroines Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockit.  The much worshiped goddess had become a source of fun and the pretensions of Italian opera the butt of a very successful satire.

By 1729 the Academy declared bankruptcy and was dissolved.   Bordoni was never to appear in England again however Cuzzoni was to make an ill-fated return several years later.

A ticket for a performance of The Beggar's Opera at Covent Garden for the benefit of Thomas Walker the original MacHeath.  It shows the unhappy Captain trapped between his battling "wives".  The design is attributed to Hogarth.

As mention Cuzzoni and Faustina had first appeared together in Venice and were great favourites there - and both had been the subjects of Anon Maria Zanetti's satirical pen.

 Francesca Cuzzoni 

 

Born in Parma in 1700 (?) Francesca Cuzzoni (called la Parmigiana) made her debut in her home town at the age of 16 in Dafni, a pastoral opera, starring Vittoria Tesi.  However she was not to remain in the shadow of other singers for long.  By 1718 she was appearing on the stage of San Giovanni Grisostomo with Faustina Bordoni and Antonio Bernacchi.  She went on to appear on the major stages of Italy and in 1722 debuted with Handel's Royal Academy in London.   She had been enticed to make the channel crossing, accompanied by her husband the harpsichordist, teacher and composer Pier Giuseppe Sandoni, by a £2000 salary and the proceeds of a benefit.

Cuzzoni had appeared many times with the renowned male soprano Nichola Grimaldi or Nicolino.  The
Carnivale season of 1730 they appeared in three operas - Idaspe, Artaserese and Mitridate; Zanetti
neglected to note which of the three was lined in this caricature

Cussoni was not known for her stage presence - she was a cold actress by the days' standards - nor her personal beauty - her receding chin is perfectly captured in Zanetti's caricature and badly hidden in one of the few official portraits.  Nor was she known for her sense of style - singers provided their own wardrobe as them moved from stage to stage and her's was often remarked upon as being rather dowdy.  However it should be noted that the brown silk dress shot with silver that she wore in Rodelinda set a fashion trend amongst the younger ladies of London.  With Cussoni it was her vocal talents that enchanted as Cleopatra, Rodelinda, Asteria and several other damsels in distress that Handel,  Bononcini and her husband wrote for her.

The painter of one of the few "official" portraits of Francesca
Cuzzoni did his best to highlight the lady's better features.
What he could not capture was the magic of her voice which
overrode any physical shortcomings she may have had.

Her London debut was as Teofane in Handel's Ottone on January 12, 1723. The story is often told that she had found that "Falsa immagine"***, her first aria, was not to her liking: she felt it was too simple and did not display her talents to their fullest.  She also had a sneaking suspicion that it had been originally written for Maddalena Salvai, Handel's previous prima donna.  Handel, who unlike many of the composers of his time would only indulge singers' whims so far, is said to have grabbed her by the waist and threatened to throw her out the window, growling: Madame you are a devil, but I will make you know that I am Beelzebub, King of the Devils.  A cowed Cuzzoni sang the aria and her debut was an incredible success.  The Royal Academy also basked in financial success with ticket prices doubling and tripling for subsequent performances.

She had a range of two octaves and her high notes were said to be unrivaled in clearness and sweetness.   It was reported that she seemed incapable of singing out of tune and had a true intonation that impressed even her rivals.  Her unaffected style fit the sympathetic roles that Handel wrote for her. 

After leaving London following the aforementioned salary insult she travelled to various opera houses in Europe and met with success everywhere but Vienna where her outrageous salary demands met with a cold reception from the local impresario.   Though she and Sandoni had separated she appeared in his operas in Venice, Modena, Bologna, Naples, Piacenz and during Carnivale seasons in 1730-1734.  In 1734 she returned to London as prima donna for the ill-fated Opera of the Nobility.  The company folded after one season and Cuzzoni made her way back to the Continent.

"Though Tuneful Scarecrow and Thou Warbling Bird" by Joseph Goupy was said to be based on a design
by the Countess of Burlington.  Farinelli and Cuzzoni had been hired by James John Heidegger, a Swiss
entrepreneur seen here lurking in the background, to perform in London. Goupy's caricature of Handel is
said to have ended their friendship.

Though she was to continue giving concerts it appears that her last operatic performance was in Hamburg in 1741.  That same year it was rumoured and gleefully reported by at least one London newspaper that she had been charged with poisoning her husband and was to be executed.  She and Sandori had been long separated and her reported act of mariticide was a good seven years before his actual demise of natural causes.

Her appointment in 1746 as court singer in Stuttgart was cut short when she left the city leaving a large number of unpaid debts.    Cuzzoni's demand for astronomical fees may have been more than a matter of prestige - she was often in debt and one of her last appearances in London was a benefit in May of 1751.  The advertisement for the concert including a begging note from the prima donna stating: "I am so extremely sensible of the many Obligations I have already received from the Nobility and Gentry of this Kingdom ... that nothing but extreme necessity and a desire of doing justice, could induce me to trouble them again, but being unhappily involved in a few Debts, am extremely desirous of attempting every Thing in my Power to pay them, before I quit England ..."  Sadly the concert was not a success and Walpole called her "old Cuzzoni" and Burney remarked on her "thin, cracked voice".  She left London for Holland shortly after; however once again the problem of debts followed her and she spent some time in Debtor's Prison.  The Prison Governor allowed her to earn money from performing to gradually pay back her creditors.

After that her name was noticeably missing from playbills or announcements and she faded from the music scene.  It is known that she went to Bologna and spent the remaining years of her life there living in poverty.  It was rumored that she found employment as a button maker and on her death in 1770 the once great prima donna left neither estate nor family. 

If Cuzzoni died in penury life after London was to be an entirely different story for her rival.

...  to be continued.

*I repeat this story with the possibility that it is an operatic urban legend but if it didn't happen it could have!

** Again possibly another operatic legend but during an interview with Time Magazine Callas is  quoted as saying that comparing her to Tebaldi was like comparing champagne with Coca-Cola.  However a bystander insists she said "champagne to cognac" and some else quipped "No, to Coca-cola" which the interviewer then attributed to Callas.

***This link will take you to a lovely performance by Rose Manion from a rather unusual programme aired in the UK called "A Night with Handel" filmed in and around modern London.

May 18 - 1944:  Deportation of Crimean Tatars by the government of the  Soviet Union.

Cantrice, Castrati e otre Bestie - Part II

During the years Anton Maria Zanetti welded his pen to capture the entertainment scene in Venice it was one of the great centres of opera in the world.  Unlike Napoli, Milano and other city-states on the Italian peninsula the theatres in La Serinissima had no royal patrons.  Theatres in the Republic were just like any other business - privately owned and run for a profit.  Teatro San Cassiano,  the first commercial theatre built exclusively for opera, had opened during Carnevale season in 1637.  In those days the celebrations went on for a longer period than today beginning just after Christmas and continuing until the first day of Lent.  It was still in operation during Zanetti's lifetime but had been joined by seven or eight major houses mainly those built by the Grimani family who included opera houses amongst their many other business investments.

The Teatro San Giovanni Grisotomo was the site of a great ball in honour of Edward Augustus, Duke of York in June 1767.  The Venetians merchants were recognizing the new importance of England as a trading partner and displayed its finest for the Royal visitor.  Sadly the Duke was unable to report to his brother on the glorious occasion: he died later that summer as he returned from his Italian sojourn.

The most famous of their theatres was the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, known today as the Teatro Malibran.  Opened during carnival in1678 it was the first of the Grimani chain and the most opulent theatre in the city.  The greatest singers of the time appeared there in works written by many of the great composers of the period.  Of course the likes of Scarlatti and Handel played second fiddle to the renowned singers they wrote for; and in the ranks of singers almost everyone played continuo to the (in)famous prime donne and castrati  of the time.   Zanetti was to capture these brilliant stars in their various personages as goddesses, gods, tragic queens and great heros but little, or no time, was spent immortalizing the mere composers of the music given these deities to sing.

Antonio Maria Bernacchi (23 June 1685 – 1 March 1756) 

 

I am giving Bernacchi pride of place because it was the caricature below that first caught my attention at the recent exhibition.  Zanetti's wittily catches the beauty and power of the voice as well as the slightly ludicrous appearance of the highly regarded contralto from Bologna.   Of course it is well known that, given the nature of the operation that gave them their voice, castrati developed differently physically.  Being robbed of the hormones need for normal growth their limbs were frequently disproportionate to the rest of their bodies, they were often overweight or freakishly tall for the period.  As formal portraits would often gloss over these physical difference we are left with Zanetti's impression - which being caricatures may unfairly exaggerate many of those deformities.  I searched for a portrait of Bernacchi but was unable to find anything other than the rather generic engraving at the right.  Most descriptions of him suggest that, though perhaps not quite as large as Zanetti suggests, he was large man and more than one writer of the time commented on it. When he appeared in London Mary Delany, a close friend of Handel, in one of her many correspondence wrote that: Bernacchi has a vast compass, his voice mellow and clear, but not so sweet as Senesino, his manner better; his person not so good, for he is as big as a Spanish friar.

Bernacchi as Mitradate, Re di Ponte at Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in 1723 shows what stuff
he's made of - his trill could scale up one side and down the other of the Campanella.

Bernacchi was born, trained and died in Bologna but his incredible technique took him well beyond the confines of Emilia-Romangna.  He was a student of the great Francesco Pistocchi who later was to despair of the style of singing that his pupil was to espouse.  On hearing the "new style" that Bernacchi had introduced into the opera house - an attempt to emulate the sound of an instrument with trills and roulades - his former master shook his head and cried:  Sadly for me, I taught you to sing, and you want to play (an instrument)!

Enough people were enamoured of his abilities that he became known as Il Re dei cantatori  (the King of Singers) throughout Europe.  As well as being a popular favourite in Venice - 20 operas in the seasons between 1712 and 1724 alone -  he appeared in all of the major opera houses of Italy and became Handel's primo uomo in 1729-30 replacing Senesino, a singer much beloved by the English public.  Though he created major roles in Lotario (1729) and Partenope (1730) and sang in revivals of Giulio Cesare and Tolomeo, Bernacchi was not as highly regarded as the Sienese alto.  His voice was judged to be weak and in many ways defective however he covered these shortcomings with great skill and his singing was more admired by other musicians than by the public.

Bernacchi in Gaetano Maria Schiassi's Demofonte at
Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo during Carnivale 1735.

He returned to Europe in 1730 and continued to appear on the stages of Italy and was a particular favourite of the Elector of Bavaria.  The one city missing from his later appearances was Napoli.  In the 1728 season he had appeared there along with his younger rival Giovanni Carestini and, as so often happened opinions and loyalties were divided along political as well as musical lines.  When contracts were being signed for the 1729 season Bernacchi demanded that Antonia Margarita Merighi, one of his pupils and possibly his "mistress" have her contract extended also.  And more to the point he would sign provided Carestini was not to be reengaged.  At first the Viceroy agreed but then a pro-Carestini party began to make noise; the Viceroy became weary of the controversy and turned the matter over to the impresario who dithered about it.  The older singer tore up his contract and grandly announce that he was a man sought after not seeking and would not stay in a country where he was not welcome.

It was this episode that made him available to Handel and he, and Merighi, set sail for England.  Merighi was much admired by the British and Handel wrote several roles for her.  Her teacher, and protector, was to return to Europe after that one season whereas she continued to be a great favourite in London in subsequent seasons.

Larger than life and twice as beplummed Antonio Bernacchi.

If London had been less than a success Bernacchi was still highly regarded in Europe and continued to perform in Venice, Milan and on the major stages of Europe.  He retired from the stage in 1738 and returned to his native city a wealthy and respected citizen.  He gave the odd concert and composed a few duets and  churches pieces; but his remaining years were devoted to teaching.  He established a school to impart his techniques to a new generation of singers.  His students included Amadori, Mancini, Guarducci and amongst the last of his pupils was the great tenor Anton Raaf.  Many years later the elderly Raaf would create the title role in Mozart's Idomeno.  Though the tenor had arranged for the commission the young composer was not fond of his "antique" style of singing.  In one of his many letters written in Munich while preparing for the premiere he wrote that "his (Raaf's) style itself, the Bernacchi school, is not to my taste." 

Bernacchi died in 1756 at the age of 71 - many of the castrati lived to a ripe old age - and was buried in his hometown.  His funeral was arranged by and paid for by Farinelli.  His former pupil and rival made sure that all the pomp appropriate to the burial of the "King of Singers" was observed.

February 15 - 1954: Canada and the United States agree to construct the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations in the Arctic.