12 John Rosselli

way.40 Seven years later she sang in Vienna, was presently taken on as chamber
singer, and settled down in the imperial establishment for at least the next
quarter-century, marrying a violinist along the way: this was perhaps a with-
drawal into a quieter world after the hurly-burly of Venetian opera.41 Anna
Venturi, on the other hand, had made her Venetian debut in the previous carnival
season (1665) at the behest of the nobleman Benetto Zorzi and in the face of
reports that at a previous engagement in Verona she had sung persistently out
of tune; Zorzi then withdrew her when the public made its disapproval clear.42
We seem to be hearing about a seventeenth-century equivalent of Citizen Kane
and the 'singer' he forced on leading opera houses (he wanted to remove the
quotation marks). What Zorzi's hold on the impresarios was we do not know:
it may have been financial, political or personal, perhaps all three.
Women opera singers needed protectors all the more because in the seven-
teenth century they were all suspected of being courtesans and some were.
The grounds for this reputation were, first, the longstanding traditional link
between women on the stage and high-class prostitution; secondly, the require-
ments of early opera and the order of priorities in opera goers' minds. Operas
such as Cavalli's required of women singers the qualifications listed by a com-
mentator in 1663: beauty, rich clothes, attractive singing, appropriate acting,
pretty well in that order - rather than dazzling technical feats.43 A number
of women singers could be straightforwardly described as prostitutes. Their
adventures were to make piquant reading at the hands of late nineteenth-century
theatre historians, but their singing careers were generally short - a few years
at most - and some were virtually non-existent.44 The outright courtesans by
definition had their protectors; the others needed protectors to establish (what
in many cases was probably true) that they were not courtesans.

40 B. Brunelli, 'L'impresario in angustie', Rivista italiana del dramma, 5 (1941), 331-3.

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 S. Mamy, introduction to A. Zeno, D. Lolli and G. Giacomelli, La
Merope, Drammaturgia musicale veneta, 18 (Milan, 1984), xv. These priorities changed
slowly. In 1728 Count Alessandro Zambeccari, 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': B. Croce, I teatri di Napoli, 1st version (Naples, 1891),
437.
44 Bianconi and Walker, 'Dalla Finta Pazza (see n. 19), 440-4; much further information
in A. Ademollo, 'La Giorgina', Fanfulla della domenica, 1881, no. 49; Croce (see n. 43),
168, 175-80, 191, 201-3, 207-10, 218, 222 (note); U. Prota-Giurleo, I teatri di Napoli
nel Seicento (Naples, 1962), 293-303. 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: F. Valesio,
Diario di Roma 1700-1742, ed. G. Scano, 6 vols. (Milan, 1977-79), I, 14, 72, 93, 341,
385; II, 21.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From princely service to the open market 13

2 The transition to professional status

When we can next observe dealings between singers and patrons, about 1685-
1715, a number of significant changes can be seen, only half-masked by a continu-
ing use of the language of flattery and submission.
First, singers were now generally identified as such rather than as undifferen-
tiated musicians or - except in some laggard German courts - as embroideresses,
head gardeners or stewards. The singer who accompanied himself or herself
on lyre or harp - essentially a chamber musician - was now a figure of the
past, though some, castratos in particular, could play the harpsichord or organ,
and a few could double on other instruments; the composer who could sing
and teach singing, without himself often singing in public, remained the Italian
norm down to Rossini and Donizetti.45
Second, leading singers' names now appeared as a rule in the libretto that
served as programme - a new departure that brought out their contribution
to the success of an opera.
Third, there were now more occasions for singing in public, that is, more
opera seasons in Italy, held in theatres open to a paying public though often
closely controlled by ruling princes or great nobles; there were also more oppor-
tunities in foreign courts. At Modena the court theatre was now paralleled
by a public theatre in the town, run by a nobleman in close touch with the
Duke; in Tuscany the Grand Prince Ferdinand (heir apparent to the throne)
ran opera seasons at his country villa, besides closely concerning himself with
public opera houses in Leghorn and Florence; singers advertised as dependent
on these two princes and on the Dukes of Mantua and Parma appeared along
a kind of circuit in all the towns just named, as well as in Venice and other
major Italian cities.46 Just what this 'dependence' meant to individual singers
will be examined shortly. But the multiplication of theatres and seasons made
it easier to move about, even for singers who belonged to a princely establish-
ment. A singing teacher in 1683, recommending a girl pupil, asked for help
in placing her either with the Duke of Modena 'or elsewhere, as for instance
in Venice, or with some other prince', implying a fairly wide range of choice;
the Duke's musical director, reporting from Venice in 1689, gave news of four
potential recruits, two of them then singing in Venetian theatres, another indir-
ectly recommended from Vienna, while three of the Duke's own singers were
then working away from base for the carnival season; a Rome agent in 1697
told the Duke of four more potential recruits, only one of whom was described

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

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
14 John Rosselli

as being then in service with a patron (the music-loving Cardinal Ottoboni).47

The impression is, not as yet of a market, but of a semi-controlled network.
Finally, rulers' ability to employ and control 'their' singers was severely affec-
ted in these years by wars - those of the League of Augsburg (1688-97) and
Spanish Succession (1701-14), which brought Habsburg and Bourbon armies
into Italy. Most of the North Italian states were invaded or overrun; the Duke
of Modena had to flee his state from 1702 to 1707; in the latter year the Gonzaga
dynasty at Mantua was overthrown. In emergencies the rulers were too busy
or financially too hard pressed to keep up their musical establishments: they
would either fail to pay them for years on end, or set them free to make a
living where they could. Some rulers, those of Mantua in particular - later
followed by those of Modena and Parma, - took to issuing patents ostensibly
taking into service as 'their' virtuosi singers who never came onto the payroll:
this seems to have been a straight swap of prestige advertising for the patron
against high-sounding protection for the artist. Rulers, however beleaguered,
still wanted to be treated as patrons, but although singers kept up the old
obsequious language they felt freer in practice to do what suited them.
This may be seen by following the careers of a number of singers. Diana
Aureli and her husband or lover the impresario Averara, an ex-abbe, were
allowed by the Duke of Savoy to seek engagements elsewhere when war overtook
him in 1690. She and Averara went to a string of Italian towns. They then
negotiated with several German states in turn (Bavaria, Brandenburg, Hanover).
When Bavaria could not have them because of the war the Duke ordered Diana
to come back for an oratorio; they put off returning to Turin on various pretexts
and instead skipped to Berlin and then Hanover. The Duke, though angered
at first, tried to use Diana as leverage to get military help from the German
states; he eventually granted her leave and extended it. She and Averara for
their part seem to have followed a policy of not alienating the Duke altogether:
they professed total obedience, but in practice went where they chose, negotiated
through Savoyard nobles and representatives for a high salary on their return,
and meanwhile made all the money they could - understandably, since the
Duke was paying Diana little or nothing. The policy paid off: Diana stayed
on the (mostly nominal) payroll from 1697 to 1710, still able to call herself
the Duke's virtuosa while singing at most times away from Turin.48
A similar title issued by the Duke of Mantua in 1688 was helpful to Maria
Maddalena Musi (known as la Mignatta), not because it was supposed to bring
her the relatively low salary of 50 doppie a year but because the ducal patent

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. 1/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.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From princely service to the open market 15

was a kind of passport; it also enabled her to use the Duke in practice as her
agent. In the following two years, though she invariably asked for his 'benign
permission' and thanked him profusely for his goodness to her 'worthless self',
she clearly ran her own negotiations; the Duke either underwrote her choice
or positively helped her, for instance by keeping the Grimani theatre in Venice
in play until she was able to settle with the rival Vendramin theatre. In later
years he seems to have put his foot down only once, when she tried to use
his authority to break one contract and enter into another; she still hoped to
enlist his influence (under the guise of asking his advice) to make sure that
she was paid for singing in Milan, something she had grounds for being anxious
about.49
There is evidence that the last Duke of Mantua treated several other well-
known singers in this way; they were not actual dependents but artists who
ran their own careers while ostensibly getting his consent, and who meanwhile
wore his title like a sandwich board. Women were prominent among them
- for instance Margherita Salicola and Barbara Riccioni - perhaps because they
could as yet work only as chamber or opera singers and these activities were
particularly affected by the wars.50 At Modena the practice of issuing patents
to singers who were never on the payroll can be documented from 1721, the
year when the Duke also cut down his actual musical establishment.51 But
through the previous thirty years Modena's patronage had been gingerly and
ambiguous.
On the one hand leading court singers - the famous castrato Siface (Giovanni
Francesco Grossi) in 1686 and the prima donna Ottavia Monteneri in 1689
- were told politely that they must sing in the Modena town theatre run by
Marquis Decio Fontanelli because the Duke regarded this as equivalent to his
own service; Monteneri's husband was left at liberty to negotiate a fee with
Fontanelli - a pretty nominal freedom when there was no alternative and hence
no leverage other than Monteneri's standing with the Duke. On the other hand
two other court singers, Marc'Antonio Origoni and Manzi, had their preferences
49 G. Cosentino, La Mignatta: Maria Maddalena Musi, cantatrice bolognese famosa, 1669-
1751 (Bologna, 1930), 25-6, 112-13, 115-19, 122-4, 127-8.
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: S. Durante, 'Alcune
considerazioni sui cantanti di teatro del primo Settecento e la loro formazione', in Bianconi
and G. Morelli, eds., Antonio Vivaldi. Teatro musicale, cultura e societa (Florence, 1982),
437 (note).
51 Patent issued to Maria Maddalena Pieri, 13 May 1721, ASMO Mus b. 1/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'); G. Roncaglia, 'La musica alla
Corte Estense dal 1707 alla costituzione del Regno d'Italia', Atti e memorie della
Deputazione di Storia Patria per le antiche province modenesi, ser. 10, I (1966), 259-77.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
16 John Rosselli

consulted when outside engagements were arranged.52 In 1713 the leading

soprano Diamante Scarabelli, then in the Modena service, was forbidden by
the Duke to sing anywhere because she had broken an engagement to sing
in Genoa; as a result the authorities in Milan, where she had an engagement
for Carnival 1714, assumed that she would not be coming and engaged someone
else, but she, it seems, arranged to sing in Rome for the Queen of Poland
instead. Between 1695 and 1718 Scarabelli was nominally a dependent of the
Duke of Mantua, the Viceroy of Naples and the Duke of Modena in turn,
but in fact she sang mainly in the public theatres of Venice and Bologna and
of other North Italian towns.53 Her dependence seems to have been largely
ornamental.
By the 1710s the old 'ducal circuit' had been broken up by the fall of the
Gonzaga and the illness and death of the Grand Prince Ferdinand: there were
now fewer singers styling themselves virtuosi of this ruler and that, while the
practice itself was obviously growing more decorative and less meaningful, until
in 1732 a comic opera libretto could parody it by describing various singers
as 'chamber virtuoso to HM the Queen of Japan amid the imaginary spaces
[. ..] musica, unbeknown to her, in the service of the Grand Mogul [. .] acciden-
tally in the service of a master she hasn't yet found'.54 It dwindled gradually
towards the 1780s.
Two women singers who made their debuts in 1708 and 1716, Rosa Ungarelli
and Faustina Bordoni, seem to have managed from the start without a noble
protector, though Rosa had many admirers and Faustina went on enjoying
the usual decorative monarchical titles.55 Faustina's exact contemporary Vittoria
Tesi dealt with nobles on an equal footing, at least by the time she was famous.
In her frank letters to her nobleman lover (a young monsignor) she was scornful
both of her fellow singers and of certain courtiers: 'I'm used to dealing with
intelligent people, I can't get accustomed to these baboons, full of ignorant
pride.' In her retirement she lived in Vienna in the palace of the music-loving

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; U. Kirkendale,
'Antonio Caldara- la vita', Chigiana, n. s. 6-7 (1969-70), 248-9, 254, 255-6, 265; 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 F. Walker, 'A
Chronology of the Life and Works of Nicola Porpora', Italian Studies, 6 (1951), 34; L.
Lindgren, 'La carriera di Gaetano Berenstadt, contralto evirato, ca. 1690-1735', Rivista
italiana di musicologia, 19 (1984), 47.
55 R. Strohm, 'Aspetti sociali dell'opera italiana del primo Settecento', Musica/Realta, 2
(1981), 126-7.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From princely service to the open market 1.7

Prince of Sachsen-Hildburghausen, not as a dependent but as a respected friend,

while the husband she had long before picked up as a convenience (a former
barber) kept the faro bank.56
Doing without a patron still meant taking a risk, but perhaps one that could
be lived with. The leading prima donna Anna Maria Peruzzi was temporarily
out of voice when she sang in Milan in 1733: some in the audience shouted
insults at her, and, according to a visiting nobleman, 'she has to hear them
and keep quiet because she has no protection [appoggio], whether from the
Governor, the court or anyone else with power; hence she is exceedingly morti-
fied.'57 What this really shows, however, is that the middle-aged commentator,
himself a protector of women singers for the previous quarter-century at least,
was working on old assumptions; the young prima donna was able to ride
out the storm without him or others of his kind, uncomfortable though the
experience no doubt was.
This is not to say that patrons vanished. Nobles in the 1720s and 1730s
went on recommending singers for opera engagements; they went on asking
each other to persuade this or that singer to enter into or fulfil a contract.58
Rulers did much the same, as they were to go on doing well into the nineteenth
century. Singers now and then tried to enlist a ruler's help in their contractual
dealings with impresarios, as when the ageing tenor Francesco Guicciardi, a
longstanding dependent of the Duke of Modena, wished the Duke's secretary
to intervene and tell those who had had the bad taste to prefer another tenor
that 'that is not how princes' servants are to be treated'.59 But so far as patronage
was used to direct an opera singer's career it was now almost wholly a matter
of influence and persuasion.
There were several reasons for this besides the disruption brought about in
court establishments by the wars. First, opera by 1700-20 was established as
the regular and foremost entertainment of many towns of Northern and Central
Italy, and of many courts throughout Central Europe and the Iberian peninsula,
as well as in London. Engagements multiplied: the better the singer the less
he or she need depend on an established post. By the 1750s even a good debutant
singer could afford to ignore the chance of a place in a church choir: of one
such young man, a correspondent of the great musicologist Padre Martini wished
he could be reported as 'following the ecclesiastical path', but in fact he had
just sung in opera at Turin and Piacenza 'with fair success, so his father has

56 B. Croce, Unprelato e una cantante nel secolo XVIII (Bari, 1946), 41-3, 52-3, 62, 69;
K. von Dittersdorf, Autobiography (New York, 19'70), 16-25.
57 Count Francesco Zambeccari to his brother, Milan 14 January 1733, in L. Frati, 'Un
impresario teatrale del Settecento e la sua biblioteca', Rivista musicale italiana, 18 (1911),
78.
58 A. Cavicchi, 'Inediti nell'epistolario Vivaldi-Bentivoglio', Nuova rivista musicale italiana,
1 (1967), 51, 62-3, 74-5; [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.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
18 John Rosselli

it in mind [...] to set him to a theatrical career'.60 Even those who did take
church posts were impelled by economic necessity or professional pride to ask
repeatedly for leave to sing in opera; if it was not granted they were apt to
resign.6
Nor should we suppose that artists no longer had a use for patrons. Unknown
young singers still needed to be introduced, a process taken to its extreme
by a well-known singing teacher on behalf of his pupil: 'Madama Saro [Sarraut?]
[...] has recommended him to the Abbe Turchi, who is on very good terms
with the Duchess of Atri, to whom Maestro Piccinni greatly defers'.62 A noble-
man could still try to push a young woman singer with whom he was having
an affair, though this could be counter-productive if the singer was mediocre:
in such circumstances Traetta's Amor in trappola, later successful, was booed
off the stage of the Teatro San Moise, Venice, in the Carnival of 1768.63 Leading
singers enjoyed flattering attentions from governors and ambassadors, such as
having them stand godparents to their children or being lent a carriage for
the afternoon corso,64 but this was a salon patronage, not unknown today and
of limited significance. The kind of dependence which in the mid seventeenth
century had marked the relation of a Marc'Antonio Pasqualini to the Barberini
family, of a Cavagnino to the Duke of Savoy, and of many other singers to
other patrons, was no longer to be found by about 1720-30, at any rate in
Italy and among successful singers. This was shown in a backhanded way when
the impresario of the new Teatro San Carlo, Naples, in 1737 refused to pay
the great castrato Giovanni Carestini until two great nobles, both his declared
'protectors', paid the arrears on their boxes - implying that Carestini was, in
the old way, an extension of his patrons' personality. The King at once ordered
Carestini to be paid - though he also told the nobles to pay their arrears.65
A second main cause of the early-eighteenth-century transition was that the
spread of public theatres, and the coming of regular opera seasons in many
towns besides Venice, affected patrons themselves. There was less need for
expensive semi-private productions in a ruler's or great nobleman's palace: the
ruler or noble proprietor could still oversee what went on in the public theatre
and use it to confirm his status, while leaving the impresario to act as a financial

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, 379-80. 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: F. Grimaldi,
Cantori maestri organisti della Cappella musicale di Loreto nei secoli XVII-XIX (Loreto,
1982).
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.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From princely service to the open market 19

and social buffer. This implied some willingness to let contractual relationships
override ties of protection and dependence.
The shift was gradual over a long period and not always consistent, but its
beginnings can be observed in the attitude of successive Viceroys of Naples.
In 1700 Maria Maddalena Musi was singing at Naples, with a contract for three
operas, when the season was interrupted by the death of the King of Spain.
The Viceroy asked her in December to stay on until the summer, when opera
would resume; she would do so only if she was paid her full fee for the cancelled
season plus a retainer. At this the Viceroy was furious; he paid Musi a third
of her fee and ordered her to leave Naples within four hours; she took refuge
with a great noblewoman, who successfully interceded to have her allowed
more time.66 We see here a mixture of contractual dispute (itself caused by
the vague wording of contracts, which did not as yet provide for such contingen-
cies) and the ruler's exercise of arbitrary power, tempered by the influence
of another patron. In 1729, at the end of a season marked by rivalry between
two great castratos, Antonio Bernacchi and the much younger Carestini, another
Viceroy asked Bernacchi to stay on for one more year: he agreed to do so
if a woman singer who was his protegee also stayed on and if Carestini was
not re-engaged. The Viceroy was willing, but a pro-Carestini party objected;
the Viceroy washed his hands of the business and left it all to the impresario;
Bernacchi told the impresario 'he was a man to be sought after; he was not
the man to put himself forward [non da raccomandarsi]; he had no wish to
stay in a country where he was unwelcome'; he tore up the draft contracts
and left Naples.67 Here ruler and patrons express partisanship, but the singer
is free to contract an engagement or not, as the mood takes him.
Naples was if anything the slowest of the Italian governments to accept the
shift from status to contract in the making and breaking of singers' engagements
and the settlement of financial questions: just before the Napoleonic take-over
it was still carrying out a policy of forbidding all benefit nights for singers
and then allowing individual exceptions, so that they could be seen to depend
on the King's will [sovrano arbitrio].68 All the same, there had been a shift:
opera singers' terms of employment were by then contractual, even in Naples;
the fuss about benefits was a rearguard action.
Italian rulers (or officials on their behalf) through the eighteenth century and
right down to the 1848 revolutions went on using arbitrary power to discipline
singers and other theatre personnel if they had misbehaved. This meant, typi-
cally, jailing singers for a few days if they had refused to sing on grounds judged
to be unreasonable - and sometimes bringing them to the theatre under guard
to perform. But there was a strong ritual element to these measures, which

66 Croce (see n. 43), 215.

67 Count Francesco Zambeccari to his brother, Naples 2 March 1729, in L. Frati, 'Antonio
Bernacchi e la sua scuola di canto', Rivista musicale italiana, 21 (1922), 478-9.
68 Deputazione dei Pubblici Spettacoli to King of Naples, 22 March, 3, 6 November 1802,
ASN Casa Reale Antica, Teatri e Feste Pubbliche f. 1269 fasc. 17, 27, 65, 82, 86, 110.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 - I I I -

20 John Rosselli

-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4z~

I~~~~
:~~~~~~.

-44~~~~~~~~~~

!!i, .....

Caricature by
the Teatro S.
M. Cappelli. (

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From princely service to the open market 21

were limited and went together with the use of the courts to resolve disputes.69
In some late-eighteenth-century Central European courts, however, the old-
fashioned notion of artists as mere servants lingered on. No Italian ruler of
the 1770s could have behaved like Frederick the Great of Prussia, who tried
to prevent the soprano Gertrud Elisabeth Mara from ever leaving Berlin, still
less like Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy - virtual ruler of his Hungarian estates,
- who gave an Italian tenor fifty lashes for serious misconduct on stage.70
The reason was not the greater benevolence of Italian rulers but the much more
developed state of opera in Italy, which allowed singers a wide field of employ-
ment. Committing oneself indefinitely to a patron still brought security of a
kind - always subject to the patron's financial solvency and the chance that
his heir might be uninterested in music. But it was one thing to spend a lifetime
on the books of the Naples royal chapel, as the leading castratos Caffarelli
and Giuseppe Aprile did (with a steady income, artistic as well as financial
insurance against old age, and meanwhile plenty of leave to sing in opera else-
where); it was quite another thing virtually to exile oneself to a remote plain
where there was no alternative to the patron's will: few other than very minor
Italian singers stayed at Eszterhaza for more than a year or two.71
There had however been a change of manners among the Italian upper classes,
if not towards greater benevolence, at any rate towards greater urbanity. Rather
than an explanation, this is the third main concomitant of singers' shift from
dependent to professional status. Metastasio in old age asked his brother if
he really thought their grandparents - men and women of the mid seventeenth
century - had been better off, living as they did in 'times when jealousy, revenge,
violence, treachery, enforced by poison, snares and hired killers, were the highest
virtues of men of high rank'.72 What he was pointing to was a Europe-wide
gentling, particularly marked in Italy. He himself had played a leading part
in instilling Italian opera with ideals of civility and grace; he had started his
work at the end of the period 1700-20, when not only was singers' dependence
on patrons waning but opera itself was moving away from the direct represen-
tation of court life (both in its serious and its comic aspects) and splitting into
two branches, one devoted to abstract 'affects', the other to the comedy of
69 See J. Rosselli, The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi. The Role of the
Impresario (Cambridge, 1984), 81-99.
70 'Eine Selbstbiographie der Sangerin Gertrud Elisabeth Mara', Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung, 10 (1875), cols 545-7, 549-50, 561, 565, 577; H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn:
Chronicle and Works (London, 1976-80), IV: Haydn at Eszterhdza, 55 (note). The events
referred to occurred in 1771 and 1776.
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.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
22 John Rosselli

ordinary life.73 As opera shed its function of mirroring court life, so singers
need no longer pretend to be courtiers. Membership of a profession was now
enough to bring, if they were successful, wealth, fame and - with prudent man-
agement - status for themselves or their descendants.

3 The coming of a market

'You've been told that I don't much like it here', one of Carissimi's ex-pupils
wrote to him from Vienna in 1639, 'if it wasn't for the money I certainly wouldn't
stay another hour'.74 A healthy interest in the cash nexus could sway even
a singer taken up mainly with church music, as this one was, even at this early
date. Not that Carissimi's pupil worked on a singers' market, as opera singers
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did. For a market to prevail,
certain conditions had to be attained, not singly but together. Most of them
were in place sometime between the 1750s and the 1780s, and the rest followed
in succeeding decades; after the 1848 revolutions, governments and law courts
were increasingly reluctant to interfere with freedom of contract among those
engaged in market transactions, a reluctance confirmed after Italian unification
in 1859-60.75
Conditions that define a market in opera singing may be set out as follows.
There must be at any one time a substantial amount of both supply and demand:
an array of singers and theatres, articulated so that there are a number of levels
of quality, pretensions and pay on both sides, with enough opportunities for
supply to meet demand (and vice versa) at each level. This implies that payment
is generally made in cash (because only cash makes possible rapid comparisons
of value between one sector of the market and another). Then theatres and
singers must be able to communicate and singers to move about readily; news
of jobs and singers available must travel fast: in a complex and dispersed business
like opera, a network of go-betweens is probably needed. Finally, singers and
their employers must both be free from serious non-economic constraints when
they make their choices; contracts must be explicit and contractual relations
governed by ascertainable laws or rules, with some assurance that these will
be enforced, and that disputes over their interpretation will be settled by means
acceptable to both sides. None of this is to suggest that a market will ever
be perfect, that it will be free from fluctuations or imbalances in supply and
demand (hence in employment opportunities or fees), or that everyone will
be satisfied with its workings.
Rather than the mere existence of theatres, demand from an array of opera
seasons makes a market. Italian towns varied in the speed with which they

73 Strohm (see n. 55).

74 Domenico Rodimonti to Giacomo Carissimi, 19 March 1639, in T. Culley, 'The Influence
of the German College in Rome on Music in German-Speaking Countries during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', Analecta musicologica, 8-9 (1969-70), II, 46-7.
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.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From princely service to the open market 23

took to regular seasons: Venice, the pioneer, had an almost unbroken run (gener-
ally in several competing theatres) from the 1640s; some leading Southern Italian
towns did not get going until the early nineteenth century. An example roughly
characteristic of the more important Northern and Central Italian towns is that
of Reggio Emilia: three or four scattered seasons in the 1640s; a fairly steady
run of seasons, with occasional years missed out (chiefly because of wars), from
1668 to 1743; regular annual seasons from 1748 to 1771; two seasons a year
as the norm from 1772.76 A sleepier town like Perugia seems to have had only
scattered opera performances until a permanent theatre was built in 1723; there
were then frequent seasons, with occasional breaks, and competing seasons
after the opening of a rival theatre in 1781.77 We shall not be far out if we
assume a general quickening of activity from 1700 to 1720, regular seasons in
many places from the 1740s, and a further intensification from about 1770 to
1780. In this sequence outbreaks of peace are significant, particularly the ending
of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748: it marked the onset of almost a
half-century without wars fought on Italian soil - a virtually unprecedented
boon - and made possible increasing traffic along a now dense Italian opera
network. Besides keeping up their previous travels to Central Europe, the British
Isles and the Iberian peninsula, Italian singers by the second half of the century
were regularly active in Russia and Scandinavia (but not until the 1840s in
Turkey, mainland Greece and the Americas).
Supply of singers cannot be measured. What is revealing is the absence, as
late as 1700, of a salary structure for opera. A list drawn up in that year of
six women singers available for a season at Bologna - all described as 'among
the best' - names fees of 80, 100, 100, 200, 260 and 500 doble.78 Though
fees were not then the only mode of payment, a range as wide as this suggests
that no one quite knew what to ask, because singers free to take part in public
performances were as yet too few to compare, and the question was complicated
by some artists' drawing benefits from a patron. In the same year the prima
donna Barbara Riccioni, invited by the nobleman in charge of the Turin opera
season to take a smaller fee than she had asked for on a previous occasion,
appealed to the Duchess Regent of Savoy, declaring that she would take whatever
the Duchess thought right.79 This device (still used by Sicilian car park atten-
dants) shows that prices are thought to be set less by a generally understood
structure than by the status of the person paying. Market pricing probably
did not come in fully until singers were paid almost wholly in cash.
In the seventeenth century cash was both hard to come by and regarded
as less honourable than payment in kind. Its scarcity went with economic back-

76 P. Fabbri and R. Verti, Due secoli di teatro per musica a Reggio Emilia. Repertorio
cronologico delle opere e dei balli 1645-1857 (Reggio Emilia, 1987).
77 B. Brumana and M. Pascale, 'II teatro musicale a Perugia nel Settecento: Una cronologia
dai libretti', Universita di Perugia, Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia, Esercizi. Arte-musica-
spettacolo, 6 (1983), 71-134.
78 C. Ricci, I teatri di Bologna (Bologna, 1888), 95-7. 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.

This content downloaded from

104.28.98.47 on Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:32:58 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms