(chase of love), the result of which is a mixture of agony and lively motives of birdsong. The rhythm is based on dotted notes while the melody is coloured a few times with chromatics. The most remarkable element of it, from the vocal technical point of view, is when the voice imitates the nightingale’s motive (bars 15‒16 and 30‒31) by snapping from a dotted quaver up a fifth ‒ a move well prepared for the singer compositionally through repeated notes. Firstly these jumps occur on a′‒eʺ, then on dʺ‒eʺ in Teuzzone, supposedly in Strada’s case on dʺ‒aʺ, keeping her in unison with the violins. This would be a clear and significant hint of Strada’s technique of high notes, as there is not much time to place the semiquaver fifth above each preceding note, and because the aʺ notes must be exact, clear, and ringing, sung with strength and with ease. The insertion of this aria into La Silvia indicates that Strada might have sung aʺ notes in b. 30 and b. 31 (at least in the da capo), showing her free, agile, and energetic head register.
Strada was engaged at the S. Sebastiano theatre in Livorno between 1722 and 1723 (see Table 1.1). How she got there from Milan is uncertain, but the libretti from those years show that she still enjoyed the protection of Count Colloredo, ←47 | 48→though she was not his virtuosa di camera any more.113 There is no other noble patron known from her early Italian years, or any impresario until late spring 1724 when she became engaged to the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. Nevertheless, there must have been some impresario(s) working in the background who arranged Strada’s Tuscan contracts as well as her appointment to Naples, even if she bore the recommendation and blessing of Count Colloredo or some other influential person of noble rank.114
In the spring of 1722, she appeared as Dalinda in Sarro’s Ginevra, principessa di Scozia, and as Costanza in an anonymous Griselda. Hardly a new work, Sarro’s Ginevra was first performed at S. Bartolomeo Naples in 1720. The role Strada sang two years later, that of Dalinda, was created originally by Anna Vicenza Dotti, a Bolognese contralto, who joined Handel’s Royal Academy in London in 1724. One can assume, therefore, that the arias were transposed and adjusted for the soprano.115 She also had an insertion, since she repeated Vivaldi’s ‘Addio caro’ (II/3) from La verità in cimento (1720).116 The other Livorno opera of 1722, the Griselda (librettist unknown), in which her character, Costanza, must marry her father while she is being separated from the man she loves, and her mother is forced into slavery, was presumably a pasticcio in which Strada may have sung some of her earlier arias. In both productions and in 1724 she sung together with Pietro Baratti, which might indicate that she was recommended by him in Lucca, or that there was an established practice to exchange singers between the two theatres. At the carnival season of 1723 she still sang in Livorno, in the revivals of Francesco Gasparini’s L’amor vince l’odio, overo Il Timocrate as well as Michelangelo Gasparini’s Il Lamano.117 In both cases she played the prima donna ←48 | 49→for the first time in her life. Il Lamano was originally performed in Venice in 1719 with Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni in the main female roles. Strada might have heard that performance and in Livorno she sang Faustina’s role which foreshadowed her future in London as successor of the two divas. She had some fine colleagues, among them the tenor Francesco Guicciardi (likewise engaged to Naples in 1724), and the soprano Teresa Zanardi Gavazzi from Bologna.118
The next year Strada performed in Lucca: she sang Sabina in the pasticcio Lucio Papirio, as well as Eduige in the Rodelinda by the local composer Giovanni Antonio Canuti di Lucca.119 In Lucio Papirio dittatore, the fundamental conflict of love and duty reflects itself in Strada’s role, that of Sabina, the sister of Quinto Fabio but also betrothed to Lucio’s son, Claudio Papirio. Cuzzoni played the same role under the name of Rutilia, in Venice from 26 December 1720 onwards. Strada might have witnessed one of the performances, as she herself was present in Venice at that time: Filippo, re di Macedonia by Boniventi and Vivaldi, premiered on 27 December 1720. However, Strada’s Sabina role gained much more importance in the drama than that of Rutilia, who in her arias always reflects the emotions of others or gives counsel to someone else. Arguably, the ethos of this character had been changed.120 Sabina’s arias are always in first person: she sings of her own personal feelings and the effects of the situation she is in. Though the music is lost, the poetry of these closed numbers is of high artistic value. The role of Eduige in Rodelinda, however, through its bitter passion, jealousy and manipulative nature represents another category of dramatic expression.
Concerning the characters Strada embodied in her early years and the energetic factor of most of the arias written for her ‒ showing an agile and strong coloratura soprano voice executing accented high notes regularly ‒ one can extrapolate to some extent the way in which it reflected her personality. Naturally, an artist specialised for the stage is able to represent qualities and manners which ←49 | 50→are not his or her own, but certainly not all the time. The fierce passion Strada showed from her debut onwards, gaining more and more ground during her career, might have been her private character too. On the other hand, most of the figures she played have deeper and more complex moral aspects. They have to make serious decisions, showing compassion and respect, and yet follow the truth; they have to meet the requirements of position and still not lose the integrity of the heart, nor its prospects for happiness; they need to hope against hope that their beloved ones survive. After these first couple of years, Strada’s developing vocal as well as dramatic skills called for challenges of a higher level. Fortunately, she did not have to wait long. Political and musical changes simultaneously made a place for her: the great success of a production at San Bartolomeo in Naples gave cause for exchanges in its cast in the spring of 1724.
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Table 1.1 Roles of Strada’s early years, 1720–24
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12 Parr. di S. Anna di Palazzo Napoli, Lib. 19° Def. f. 71: ‘A dì 20 Luglio 1775 — La Signora Donna Anna Strada, d’anni 72. Vedova, ricevuti li SS.mi Sacram: morì a dì detto in Com.ne di S. Chiesa, fu sepellita alla Congr.ne di S. Maria della Salvaz.ne accosto S. Anna, abitava alla strada del Carminiello’.
13 Francesco Saverio Quadrio, Della storia e della ragione d’ogni poesia, vol. iii (Milan: Francesco Agnelli, 1744), 537.
14 I am very grateful to Anita Sikora, who drew my attention to Giuseppe and Andriana Strada and suggested the possibility of them being Anna Maria’s parents. See also K. J. Kutsch/Leo Riemens/Hansjörg Rost (eds), Grosses Sängerlexikon, vol. vi (K. G. Saur: Munich, 2003), 4562; libretti in I-MC J.85 and L.76.
15 In a Muzio Scevola and Giovanni Pagliardi’s Numa Pompilio 1690, Furo Camillo by Giacomo Perti 1697, Il gran Pompeo 1704, Francesco Pollarolo’s Venceslao 1708, Partenope by Antonio Caldara 1709, Tomaso Albinoni’s I rivali generosi 1715.
16 Paola Besutti, La Corte Musicale di Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga Ultimo Duca di Mantova (Mantova: 1989), 82.