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Sending Information on Vocal Range and Abilities in Eighteenth-Century Italy: New Insights into a Specific Opera Management Procedure, 1730–1760
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2025
Extract
While examining diverse archival sources relating to eighteenth-century Italian opera, I have come across references to the practice of singers, composers and theatre agents exchanging information about ‘corde’, ‘tuoni’, ‘virtuoso di cantabile’ and ‘abbilità’. To what were they referring with these words? In this essay, I show that the notes that singers were able to produce were termed ‘corde’ or ‘tuoni’; and that the quality of their voices, including their virtuoso singing capabilities, was designated by the expressions ‘virtuoso di cantabile’ and ‘abbilità’. Additionally, I show that this information was sent by mail to facilitate a composer's work in absentia.
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References
1 I term such documents corde and abbilità.
2 On the influence of singers on operas see Durante, Sergio, ‘Il cantante’, in Storia dell'opera italiana, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio, six volumes, volume 4 (Turin: EDT, 1987), 347–415Google Scholar.
3 On opera production in seventeenth-century Italy see Franco Piperno, ‘Il sistema produttivo, fino al 1780’, in Storia dell'opera italiana, volume 4, 1–31.
4 On this, and for the quotation, see Rosand, Ellen, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 220–221Google Scholar.
5 See, for example, Aspden, Suzanne, The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and LaRue, Carl S., Handel and His Singers: The Creation of the Royal Academy Operas (1720–1728) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Claudio Monteverdi, letter to Alessandro Striggio, 22 May 1627, Archivio di Stato, Mantua, Autografi, folder 6, fols 326–327. Transcribed in Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Turin: EDT, 1985), 263–264. Unless specified otherwise, the translations are mine.
7 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, five volumes, volume 1 (Florence: Francesco Maria Manni, 1729), 631. This entry had remained unaltered since the publication of the first edition of the Vocabolario in 1612.
8 Antonio Cavagna, letter to Marco Faustini, 17 October 1665, Archivio di Stato, Venice, Scuola Grande di San Marco, folder 188, document 212; trans. in Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 238–239.
9 Antonio Cavagna, letter to Marco Faustini, 14 November 1666, Archivio di Stato, Venice, Scuola Grande di San Marco, folder 188, document 212; trans. in Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 239.
10 Paolo Falconieri, letter to Luca degli Albizzi, 13 June 1683, Fondo Albizzi, Archivio Guicciardini, Florence, folder 738; trans. in Holmes, William, Opera Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 31–32Google Scholar.
11 On the 1737 inaugural season at the San Carlo see Croce, Benedetto, I teatri di Napoli (Naples: Pierro, 1891), 324–327Google Scholar.
12 Croce, I teatri, 330–331. The letter is preserved in Naples, Archivio di Stato, Ufficio Politico, Segreteria di Casa Reale, Amministrazione dei Teatri, filza 1. (The term filza can be translated literally as ‘a string of things strung together’. With reference to archival work, a filza is a bundle of documents joined together by a long nail or string – sometimes already undone, sometimes still bound together.)
13 The role played by Peruzzi's sister in these operas remains obscure.
14 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, six volumes, volume 5 (Florence: Francesco Maria Manni, 1738), 144. The quotation has been taken from the Florentine edition because this is more easily accessible online. The Neapolitan reprint is described, on its frontispiece, as ‘based upon the last Florentine edition’, that is to say the edition just cited, published by Manni (Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca: Impressione napoletana secondo l'ultima di Firenze con la giunta di mille voci raccolte dagli autori approvati dalla stessa Accademia, five volumes (Naples: Giovanni di Simone, 1746–1748)).
15 Vocabolario degli Accademici, volume 5, 284.
16 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca: Impressione napoletana, six volumes, volume 5 (Naples: Giovanni di Simone, 1748), ‘Giunta di altri vocaboli e correzioni di errori’, no pagination.
17 Mozart, writing to his father in the 1770s, clearly distinguishes two styles of singing: ‘bravura’ and ‘cantabile’. Whereas the first term indicates ‘runs and roulades’, the second appears more linked, at least for Mozart, to a singing style that ‘singt zum herzen’ (goes to the heart). Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to Leopold Mozart, 19 February 1778, in Digitale Mozart-Edition Briefe und Dokumente, https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/ (3 October 2024); trans. in Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Mozart and His Family, third edition (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 486. Evidently, Mozart's use of the term ‘cantabile’ differs slightly from that of Ulloa. This should not surprise, as the two wrote their letters in different contexts and periods. The idea that Ulloa uses the term ‘cantabile’ with the simple meaning of ‘that [which] could be sung’ is further suggested by Peruzzi's vocal profile during that period. It is not to my purpose to reconstruct here the specific qualities of her voice, yet a quick glance at the arias she sang in certain Neapolitan operas of 1737 (Achille in Sciro, Naples, Biblioteca del Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, 31.03.08; L'Olimpiade, Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Don Mus.Ms. 1219) reveals that her vocal abilities centred on ‘runs and roulades’, rather than on what Mozart would have described as ‘cantabile’.
18 It is beyond the scope of the present essay to reconstruct the vocal profile of La Parrucchierina and other singers. For that topic, which shares some of my current concerns, see Gidwitz, Patricia Lewy, ‘“Ich bin die erste Sängerin”: Vocal Profiles of Two Mozart Sopranos’, Early Music 19/4 (1991), 565–579CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Archivio di Stato di Milano (hereafter ASMi), Atti di Governo, ‘Spettacoli Pubblici Parte Antica’, folder 44. The reference to the libretto of Zenobia is motivated by both parties’ indecisiveness regarding the choice of libretto. The premiere of Demetrio was on 26 December 1748; still, by late August neither the Regio's functionaries nor the composer were in agreement over which libretto to set to music.
20 ASMi, Atti di Governo, ‘Spettacoli Pubblici Parte Antica’, folder 44.
21 We know almost nothing about this singer. A glance at the librettos in which his name appears suggests that he was active between 1743 and 1775.
22 Gregorini, Giovanni, Il frutto della gabella: la ferma generale a Milano nel cuore del Settecento (Milan: Vita & Pensiero, 2003), 172Google Scholar.
23 On Gabrielli see Gerhard Croll and Irene Brandenburg, ‘Gabrielli, Caterina’, in Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com (29 August 2024).
24 ASMi, Archivio Greppi, folder 24.
25 Sartori, Claudio, I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800, seven volumes, volume 2 (Cuneo: Bertola & Locatelli, 1990), 325Google Scholar.
26 Sartori, I libretti, volume 5 (Cuneo: Bertola & Locatelli, 1992), 19.
27 On Aguiari see Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, ‘Aguiari, Lucrezia’, in Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com (29 August 2024).
28 ASMi, Archivio Greppi, folder 36.
29 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to Anna Maria Mozart, 24 March 1770, in Digitale Mozart-Edition Briefe und Dokumente, https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/ (7 October 2024); also in Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozarts (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1828), 184–186.
30 ‘La Coghetta’ was Gabrielli's nickname; she was daughter of a chef (cuoco in Italian), so her nickname was ‘Coghetta’ (literally, ‘the little chef’).
31 On Mozart and Aguiari see Anthony Pryer, ‘Mozart's Operatic Audition: The Milan Concert, 12 March 1770’, Eighteenth-Century Music 1/2 (2004), 279. The c4 sung by Aguiari would have been slightly higher than its equal-temperament counterpart; the a1 of an organ built in Parma in 1764 is set to 444 Hz (Mozart heard Aguiari's voice in her house in Parma). Conversely, Gabrielli's d3 would have been lower than the modern one. The pitch of the a1 of organs built in the Veneto during the 1750s and 1760s is around 430 Hz (the aria by Galuppi in Example 2 was composed for an opera produced in Padua). On this matter see Haynes, Bruce, A History of Performing Pitch: The Story of ‘A’ (Lanham: Scarecrow, 2002), 269–271 and 473Google Scholar.
32 Pryer, ‘Mozart's Operatic Audition’, 279.
33 L'isola disabitata: azione drammatica per musica da rappresentarsi nel Nuovo Teatro del pubblico di Bologna in occasione del faustissimo passaggio per detta città della maestà di Maria Carolina arciduchessa d'Austria real sposa di Sua Maestà Siciliana dedicata alla stessa augusta sposa dal conte Gio. Luca Pallavicino generale commissario, e ambasciatore delle L. L. M. M. I. I., e R. Ap. per il viaggio e consegna della Maestà Sua (Bologna: Lelio della Volpe, 1768). Libretto in Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica, Bologna, Lo.05346.
34 L'isola disabitata, xii.
35 Armida maga abbandonata: Dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nel Teatro di Lodi per il carnovale dell'anno 1768. Dedicato all'impareggiabile merito degli ecc[ellentissi]mi, ed ill[ustrissi]mi ss.ri uffiziali del Presidio di detta città (Milan: Giovanni Battista Bianchi, 1768), 13. Libretto in Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan, Racc.dramm.6042.03.
36 ASMi, Archivio Greppi, folder 52.
37 ASMi, Archivio Greppi, folder 52.