accessed 14 December 2014.
119 Salvi, Ginevra, principessa di Scozia (1722); id., Lucio Papirio dittatore. Printed libretto (Lucca: Domenico Cuffietti, 1724), I-Vgc Rolandi Rol.0685.02; id., Rodelinda. Printed libretto (Lucca: Domenico Cuffietti, 1724), I-Vgc Rolandi Rol.0196.22.
120 Expression borrowed from Desler, ‘Il novello Orfeo’. Farinelli, 177.
121 Antonio Vivaldi, La Silvia. (RV 734, Milan 1721). Reconstruction of twenty-two arias from surviving sources at the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino and the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, with no recitative. Perf. Roberta Invernizzi, Gloria Banditelli, John Elwes, Philipp Cantor, Ensemble Baroque de Nice, cond. Gilbert Bezzina, compact disc (Ligia Digital: 203090, 2000).
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Chapter Two:
First Maturity
… begins with Strada’s engagement in Naples (1724–1726), listing her new colleagues: Vico, Tesi, and the young Farinelli. It describes the city as the operatic capital of Europe, giving accounts of its political status, the role and significance of the S. Bartolomeo theatre, the system of the four conservatories, the generations of composers such as Scarlatti, Sarro, Mancini, Porpora, and Leo, the galant style and its musical features, and how is it connected to the new manner of singing. The Del Pò dynasty of painters and stage designers are introduced: Andrea in particular as the impresario of the S. Bartolomeo and future husband of Strada. There are detailed musical analyses on Strada’s parts in Porpora’s Semiramide regina dell’Assiria – with an interlude discussing Farinelli’s possible inspiration for Strada as her stage partner (and Porpora’s singing school represented by him) –, Sarro’s Tito Sempronio Gracco, Leo’s Zenobia in Palmira, and Vinci’s Astianatte, showing Strada’s maturing voice, expanding range, as well as dramatic abilities.
Keywords: Naples, S. Bartolomeo theatre, Farinelli, galant style, vocal range, Aurelio del Pò, Zenobia in Palmira
From the spring of 1724, Strada was engaged at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples following a substantial change in the houseʼs ensemble. The turnover every few years seems to have been a practice of contemporary opera management, especially in Naples, where it became a tradition to hire new singers from the spring season onwards.122 The other important reason for contracting a new cast was the enormous success of Pietro Metastasioʼs Didone abbandonata, set to music by Domenico Sarro and premiered on 1 February that year. According to Kurt Sven Markstrom, someone from the Teatro San Cassiano Venice appears to have witnessed one of the performances and was so impressed that he brought the production to Venice, complete with the poet Metastasio, the cast (including the soprano Marianna Benti-Bulgarelli detta ʻLa Romanina’123 and the contralto castrato Nicolò Grimaldi detto Nicolini),124 along with the intermezzo and its ←53 | 54→performers (such as the comic duo Corrado and Santa Marchesini). There it was premiered the next year with the music of Tomaso Albinoni.125
Thus, they left and were replaced by the young soprano castrato Carlo Broschi detto Farinelli (his first engagement at S. Bartolomeo),126 and the contralto Diana Vico who specialised in trouser roles.127 Later in the autumn, a further contralto, Vittoria Tesi,128 arrived in place of her great rival Antonia Merighi, Stradaʼs former and later colleague (who also left after Didone and became engaged for the next season at S. Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice).129
One may well ask how Strada had been found. Again, personal relations may have stood in the background. Firstly, her protector was Girolamo Colloredo, the governor of Milan from 1719 to 1725. Evidence suggests that he recommended his singer on prior occasions.130 Furthermore, Merighi and the contralto Antonia Laurenti detta La Coralli had worked together with Strada in Venice at SantʼAngelo (1720‒1721). If a singer could at least have had a say in the decision, it is likely that Merighi would have proposed her name in Naples. Further factors might have been Strada’s youth, as well as her reputation from her Venetian collaboration with Vivaldi.
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Naples, the operatic capital of Europe
Significant changes occurred around that time in Neapolitan operatic life. Firstly, the social as well as musical role of the S. Bartolomeo shifted. The theatre, which had been opened in 1621, initially presented mainly Neapolitan works. Later in the autumn of 1724, following its renovation, it assumed a leading role in the operatic life of the aristocracy as well.131 Of course, other theatres offered opera performances, such as the Teatro dei Fiorentini, which had given up presenting spoken dramas and kept focusing on musical ones from 1706 onwards. But in 1709, after staging a comic opera in Neapolitan dialect (a novelty which proved successful), the Fiorentini specialised in the genre, leaving heroic opera almost entirely to S. Bartolomeo.132 Leonardo Vinci, for instance, made his debut at the Fiorentini in 1719 as the composer of a commedia per musica, Lo cecato fauzo, earning tremendous applause.133 Noblemen visited both theatres, though mostly S. Bartolomeo. Furthermore, in 1724 two new theatres were inaugurated for the performance of comic operas: the Della Pace and the Nuovo.134
By mid-century, Naples became the ‘capital of the world’s music’ due to its ‘best schools of music’, as De Brosses stated.135 Music and musical education gained wide popularity and became deeply rooted in society. Large families destined their sons to be priests, instrumental players, and singers ‒ in that order. Naples had four excellent conservatories: S. Maria di Loreto, S. Maria della Pietà dei Turchini, Poveri di Gesù Cristo, and S. Onofrio a Capuana, all founded in the sixteenth century and generally with ‘two music masters, the senior being selected from among the most celebrated composers and giving three lessons a week’.136
The presence and significant influence of renowned composers in the Neapolitan musical life, especially in the field of opera, began with the arrival of Alessandro Scarlatti in 1684, when he received the title of Maestro di Cappella from the viceroy of Naples, which he held until his death in 1725. This was probably ←55 | 56→due to the influence of his sister, who was not only an opera singer but also a nobleman’s mistress, although Scarlatti’s reputation had already been cemented in Rome. He was, however, absent in Naples between 1702 and 1708, during which period a new generation of composers trained in the conservatories arose: among them were Domenico Sarro, Francesco Mancini, and Niccolò Porpora, not to mention Leonardo Vinci, whose fame spread beyond Naples (mainly to Rome) and career reached its zenith in the mid-1720s onwards.137 Music was not only exported to other parts of Italy and beyond, but young musicians also started to arrive with the support of the Austrian court. Composers who later become famous, such as Johann Adolph Hasse (1722–1730), also visited the city in order to study privately.138
Traditional historiography has identified the musical style of Naples