Faustina Bordoni - mezzo-soprano

Brilliant career overshadowed by infamous on-stage fight

A portrait of Faustina Bordoni by the
Venetian painter Rosalba Carriera

Faustina Bordoni, a feted mezzo-soprano ranked as one of the finest opera singers of the 18th century, was born on this day in 1697 in Venice.

Such was her popularity that when she joined her husband, the German composer Johann Adolf Hasse, in the employment of the Court of Saxony, where Hasse was maestro di cappella, her salary was double his.

Yet for all her acting talent and vocal brilliance, Bordoni is more often remembered as one half of the so-called ‘rival queens’ engaged by George Frideric Handel to join the company of the booming Royal Academy of Music in London in the 1720s, where she and the Italian soprano Francesca Cuzzoni allegedly came to blows on stage.

Born into a respected Venetian family, Bordoni’s musical talent was nurtured by the composers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello and by her singing teacher, Michelangelo Gasparini. 

She made her debut in Venice at the age of 19 in Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's Ariodante. The quality of her voice excited the critics, while audiences were instantly charmed by her youthful beauty and stage presence.

Fame came quickly. As well as continuing to perform in her home city, where she performed for composers such as Tomaso Albinoni and Giuseppe Maria Orlandini, Bordoni sang in venues across Italy and in both Vienna and Munich. Her fans began to refer to her simply as ‘Faustina’.

Bordoni's singing rival,
Francesca Cuzzoni

Her rivalry with Cuzzoni, a soprano from Parma of approximately the same age, probably began in Venice, although it was not until Bordoni arrived in London in 1726 that it came to a head in dramatic fashion.

Cuzzoni had been in London since 1722, establishing herself as one of the stars of the Royal Academy alongside the celebrated castrato, Senesino. Already known for a fiery temper, she had once allegedly refused to perform a role when she discovered Handel had initially written it for someone else.

When Handel, under pressure from the theatre management to engage more singers so they could meet a growing demand for performances as opera’s popularity soared, announced that Bordoni would be joining them in London, Cuzzoni was said to be furious.

After Bordoni’s debut alongside Cuzzoni in Handel’s Alessandro, London opera fans began to divide into factions who favoured Faustina and others who preferred Cuzzoni.

Watching opera in the 1700s was very different from today. Although theatres had wealthy patrons, they also provided entertainment for the masses and audiences did not necessarily conduct themselves with decorum, even to the extent of booing a singer considered a rival to their favourite. 

Johann Adolf Hesse, to whom
Bordoni was married in 1730

The Cuzzoni-Bordoni rivalry came to a head when they were cast to appear alongside one another in a performance of Giovanni Bononcini’s opera Astianatte at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, in June 1727.

Despite the presence of Caroline, Princess of Wales in the audience, rival factions took turns to jeer and catcall whenever one or the other began to sing and when the two singers appeared on the stage together a fight broke out in the stalls.

Although accounts in the newspapers were almost certainly exaggerated for dramatic effect, Cuzzoni was reported to have turned on Bordoni, sparking an exchange of insults. Soon they were said to have begun pulling at each other’s hair and tearing pieces from their costumes. After they were separated, the performance was abandoned.

Bordoni left England the following year after the Royal Academy was forced into closure with unsustainable debts, driven partly by the high salaries commanded by the singers.  She married Hasse in 1730 and they remained with the Saxon Court in Dresden for 30 years, enjoying the status of a celebrity couple. Bordoni sang in 15 operas written by her husband, as well as continuing to travel regularly to the major opera houses of Italy.

She and Hasse left Dresden for Vienna in 1763 and ultimately to Venice in 1773. Bordoni is said to have continued to sing into her 70s before settling into a comfortable retirement. She died in Venice in 1781 at the age of 84.

Teatro La Fenice opened
its doors in 1792

Travel tip:

Opera was so popular in Venice in the 18th century that the city boasted no fewer than seven opera houses. The biggest of these, the Teatro San Benedetto in San Marco, was destroyed in a fire in 1771. Rebuilt, it became the object of a legal dispute involving the Venier family, who owned part of the land on which the theatre was built. The Venier family won the case and the company running the theatre had to sell up. On a different site, they built another opera house and called in Teatro La Fenice - the Phoenix Theatre - to symbolise its rise from the flames. Work was completed in April 1792 and the new opera house inaugurated on 16 May with a performance of I giochi di Agrigento by Giovanni Paisiello, to a libretto by Alessandro Pepoli.

Travel tip:

Faustina Bordoni and her husband Johann Adolf Hasse are buried within the Church of San Marcuola in the Cannaregio district of Venice, overlooking the Grand Canal, opposite the Fontego dei Turchi, between Santa Lucia railway station and the Rialto.  The church is actually dedicated to Saints Ermagora and Fortunato. The name San Marcuola is thought to be rooted in Venetian dialect. The church is thought to have been built originally in the 12th century. It was restructured in the 18th century by Giorgio Massari in accordance with plans drawn up by Antonio Gaspari, but the façade remained unfinished.  The interior is notable for a Last Supper by Jacopo Tintoretto, thought to be one of the Venetian painter’s earliest works.  

Also on this day:

1282: Sicily rises up against the French

1815: The Proclamation that began the Risorgimento movement

1892: The birth of Futurist painter and graphic artist Fortunato Depero

1905: The birth of urban engineer and architect Ignazio Gardella

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Franco Corelli - 'Prince of Tenors'

Self-taught singer who wowed New York

Franco Corelli's movie star looks added to
the quality of his voice

The great Italian tenor Franco Corelli died in Milan on this day in 2003 aged 82 after suffering heart problems.

Corelli was renowned for the power and vibrancy of his voice, described by some as generating a 'white heat' on the stage when he performed.  In a career spanning more than a quarter of a century he mastered all the major tenor roles and appeared at the greatest opera theatres in the world.

He was a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he performed 19 roles over 15 seasons in some 365 appearances.  As well as possessing outstanding vocal range, he used his natural assets – he stood 6ft 1ins tall and weighed 200lbs – to develop a charismatic stage presence.

Blessed with movie star looks, he had the appearance of an opera-singing Errol Flynn. He was nicknamed the 'Prince of Tenors'.

Corelli was born in 1921 in Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast, in a house just yards from the shore.
His father was a shipbuilder for the Italian navy and as he neared adulthood it seemed that Corelli’s destiny was to pursue the same profession. He obtained a place at Bologna University to study naval engineering.

It was while he was in Bologna that a friend dared him to enter a singing competition. He did not win but the judges were impressed enough with his voice to tell him that with proper training he could have a career as a professional singer if he wanted.

Clearly, he had inherited some of the talent of his grandfather, Augusto, who had been an operatic tenor, and two uncles, who had both been in the chorus of the Teatro delle Muse in Ancona.

Mario del Monaco's style
influenced Corelli

Corelli entered the Conservatory of Pesaro but despite the expert coaching he received felt that the experience made his voice worse rather than better. After finding himself unable to reach notes that were previously within his capabilities, he decided he would be better off developing his own technique and declared voice teachers to be ‘dangerous people.’

Although he took advice from the voice coach of another great tenor, Mario del Monaco, he was essentially self taught, identifying Enrico Caruso, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Beniamino Gigli among a small group of singers he chose to study.

He developed a vocal power similar to that enjoyed by Del Monaco and after winning a competition at the Maggio Musicale festival in Florence made his opera debut at Spoleto in 1951 as Don Jose in Carmen.

By 1954 he was performing opposite Maria Callas at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, gaining the respect of the brilliant soprano as a co-star whose acting ability matched hers.  His debut at the Met came in 1961 in a production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore.

Not all critics were fans. Like Del Monaco, he was accused of sacrificing finesse for power and found some opera writers expressed their disapproval after his debut at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1957, when in Act II of Puccini’s Tosca he stretched Cavaradossi’s defiant cry of ‘Vittoria!’ to a full 12 seconds to show how good he was at holding a high note. The audience was in raptures but critics panned him for showing off.

Watch Franco Corelli sing the aria E Lucevan le stelle from Tosca

Later in his career, it surprised no one that he should have behaved in such a way as he developed a reputation as someone who had a sharp sense of his own importance.

Prone to temperamental outbursts, he was said to be incensed, during a Met production of Puccini’s Turandot in Boston, when the Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson held a high ‘C’ for longer than he had. Later in the performance, Ms Nilsson claimed he took the opportunity presented by a scene in which he was required to plant a stage kiss her cheek to bite her on the neck, something Corelli denied but his co-star insisted was true.

Franco Corelli as he appeared in the title
role in Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier

On another occasion at Teatro San Carlo in Naples he reacted to being heckled from a third-tier box by leaving the stage, in full costume as Manrico in Il Trovatore, climbing three flights of stairs and breaking down the locked door of the box with his shoulder, then waving his costume sword at the terrified occupant. It took the intervention of two ushers to restrain him.

Ahead of any performance he was nervous and ritualistic, making it a contractual obligation on the part of the theatre to prepare him steak tartare with lemon juice and raw garlic, which he consumed immediately before going on stage with no regard for the sensitivities of his leading lady, whatever her stature. On the other hand, he neither smoked nor drank alcohol at any time.

Away from performing, he had a taste for the high life. He modelled clothes for Town and Country magazine and had a passion for expensive cars and cameras. At one point during his years of fame in America he had a Jaguar, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, a Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac in his garage and he could pick from any one of 12 cameras when he decided he wanted a day to indulge his interest in photography.

In 1958 he met Loretta di Lelio backstage at the Rome Opera House and they married, at which point the fledgling soprano gave up her career to become his secretary, business manager, agent and translator.  A forceful negotiator, she won him many lucrative contracts.

Corelli was at his peak between 1950 and 1970, after which he began to scale back his appearances sharply. He retired in 1976, having decided his vocal powers were beginning to decline and unwilling to expose his ego to the harsh criticisms that he knew would come if he overstayed his welcome.
It was a wise decision, ensuring his place among the greats of opera would be preserved.

An aerial view of the Adriatic port of Ancona 

Travel tip:

Ancona is the capital of the Marche region. A port city of more than 100,000 inhabitants, it is known for its beaches, such as the Spiaggia del Passetto, and for the 12th century Cathedral of San Ciriaco, which sits on a hilltop. The Fontana del Calamo, with bronze masks of mythic figures, is a feature in the city centre. On opposite sides of the port are the ancient  Arch of Trajan and the 18th century quarantine station, the Lazzaretto.


Travel tip:

The ancient city of Spoleto in Umbria, where Corelli made his stage debut, is famous for its Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of the Two Worlds), founded in 1958, which is held annually in late June-early July. It has developed into one of Italy’s most important cultural events, with a three-week schedule of music, theatre and dance performances.


More reading:

Tito Gobbi - baritone who found fame on screen and stage

Luciano Pavarotti - maestro remembered as 'King of the Hugh Cs'

Andrea Bocelli - today's modern superstar tenor

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Luciano Pavarotti - tenor

Singer who became known as ‘King of the High Cs’

Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti, one of the greatest operatic tenors of all time, was born on this day in 1935 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna.

Pavarotti made many stage appearances and recordings of arias from opera throughout his career. He also crossed over into popular music, gaining fame for the superb quality of his voice.

Towards the end of his career, as one of the legendary Three Tenors, he became  known to an even wider audience because of his concerts and television appearances.

Pavarotti began his professional career on stage in Italy in 1961 and gave his final performance, singing the Puccini aria, Nessun Dorma, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. He died the following year as a result of pancreatic cancer, aged 71.

The young Pavarotti had dreamt of becoming a goalkeeper for a football team but he later turned his attention to training as a singer.

His earliest influences were his father’s recordings of the Italian tenors, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa and Enrico Caruso. But Pavarotti has said that his own favourite tenor was the Sicilian, Giuseppe di Stefano.

Pavarotti with the Australian
soprano Joan Sutherland

Pavarotti experienced his first singing success as a member of a male voice choir from Modena, in which his father also sang. The choir won first prize at the International Eisteddfod in Wales in 1955.

He was later to say that this was the most important experience of his life and had inspired him to become a professional singer.

Pavarotti made his debut as Rodolfo in La Bohème at the Teatro Municipale in Reggio Emilia in 1961.

He sang with Joan Sutherland on a tour of Australia and America and then returned to Italy to make his debut at La Scala in Milan in La Bohème with his childhood friend from Modena, Mirella Freni, singing Mimi opposite his Rodolfo.

His first performance as Tonio in Donizetti’s La fille du regiment took place at the Royal Opera House in London in 1966. This role was later to earn him the title, ‘King of the High Cs’, on account of the aria, Pour mon âme, which requires the singer to deliver the most challenging of notes nine times. Pavarotti, at his peak, was able to hit it every time with no loss of power.

Pavarotti with Placido Domingo (left) and Jose Carreras
at the Three Tenors concert at the Baths of Caracalla in 1990

Pavarotti became world famous when his rendition of the aria, Nessun Dorma, from Puccini’s Turandot, was taken as the theme tune for the BBC’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup in Italy in 1990. Then came the hugely successful Three Tenors concert on the eve of the World Cup Final with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome. A recording of this concert was to become the biggest selling classical record of all time.

In 2004 Pavarotti gave his last opera performance, as the painter Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Watch Pavarotti sing Nessun Dorma in Central Park

Every summer he hosted an annual ‘Pavarotti and Friends’ concert in Modena, singing with other popular artists to raise money for humanitarian causes. Having helped to raise money for the elimination of landmines worldwide, he became a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was also dedicated to the cause. Pavarotti attended her funeral at Westminster Abbey in 1997.

His own funeral was to take place in Modena Cathedral ten years later and, like Princess Diana’s funeral, it was also televised and watched by a huge international audience.

The Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival Hall flew black flags in mourning for the great tenor.

The Duomo at Modena, where the funeral
of Pavarotti took place in 2007

Travel tip:

Modena is a city on the south side of the Po Valley in the Emilia-Romagna region. The ancient Cathedral of Modena in Piazza Grande, where Pavarotti’s funeral was held, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its first stone was laid in 1099 but the building was not finished until 1184 and its Gothic Campanile was added in 1319.

Travel tip:

The Baths of Caracalla in Rome, where the first Three Tenors concert was held in 1990, were public baths that had been built in Rome between 211 and 217. They were used free of charge by local people until the sixth century, when the hydraulic installations were destroyed by invaders. During the 1960 Summer Olympics, gymnastic events were hosted there and the Rome Opera company now perform there in the summer. The Baths of Caracalla have become a popular concert venue, following the success of the Three Tenors concert.

More reading:

The genius of Gaetano Donizetti

How Puccini picked up the baton from Verdi

Enrico Caruso - was he the greatest tenor of them all?

(Top photo of Pavarotti by Pirlouiiiit CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Mirella Freni – opera singer

Good advice from Gigli helped soprano have long career

Mirella Freni, pictured in 1970

Singer Mirella Freni was born Mirella Fregni on this day in 1935 in Modena in Emilia-Romagna .

Freni’s grandmother, Valentina Bartolomasi, had been a leading soprano in Italy from 1910 until 1927, specialising in Wagner roles. By coincidence, her mother worked alongside the mother of tenor Luciano Pavarotti in a tobacco factory in Modena.

Freni was obviously musically gifted and sang an opera aria in a radio competition when she was just ten years old.

One of the judges was the tenor Beniamino Gigli, who advised her to give up singing until she was older to protect her voice.

Freni took his advice and resumed singing when she was 17, making her operatic debut at the Teatro Municipale in Modena at the age of 20 in Bizet’s Carmen.

Her international debut came at Glyndebourne in Franco Zeffirelli’s staging of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.

In the 1960 season at Glyndebourne she sang comic roles from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.

Listen to Mirella Freni performing "Un bel di vedremo" from Madame Butterfly

Freni made her Covent Garden debut in 1961, her La Scala debut in 1963 and her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1965.

She started singing the heavier Verdi roles in the 1970s but she always refused roles for which she thought she was unsuited, or that might overtax her voice, which contributed to her longevity as a singer.

The soprano starred in a 1975 film of Madame Butterfly opposite Placido Domingo.

In 1978 she married Nicolai Ghiaurov, a leading operatic bass. Together they established the Centro Universale del Bel Canto in Vignola, near Modena in 2002, where they began giving master classes. Freni continued this work after his death in 2004.

She celebrated her 50th anniversary on the operatic stage in 2005 at the age of 70 at the Met in New York before retiring.

Modena's 11th century Duomo

Travel tip:

Modena is an historic city in Emilia Romagna with a magnificent main square, Piazza Grande, which has an 11th century Duomo dedicated to San Geminiano, and is now a Unesco world heritage site. The city’s opera house was renamed Teatro Communale Luciano Pavarotti in 2007 after the great tenor. Modena is also famous for its balsamic vinegar, Aceto Balsamico di Modena.

Hotels in Modena from Booking.com



Travel Tip:

South of Modena is the city of Vignola, where Freni and Ghiaurov established their Centro Universale del Bel Canto. Famous for its cherry trees and the abundant fruit they produce, Vignola has one of the best preserved castles in the region, the Rocca di Vignola, founded in the eighth century but rebuilt and turned into a residence for a wealthy family in the 13th century. The city was also the birthplace of the brilliant architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola in 1507.

Stay in Vignola with Booking.com

More reading

Enrico Caruso: The voice of the great Caruso can still be heard

Renata Tebaldi: soprano with 'the voice of an angel'

Beniamino Gigli: one of the greatest tenors of the 20th century

Also on 27 February:

1950: The birth of fashion designer Franco Moschino

1964: Italy appeals for help with Leaning Tower of Pisa

1973: The birth of singer and actress Chiara Iezzi

1978: The birth of dancer Simone Di Pasquale

Books:

Understanding Italian Opera, by Tim Carter

(Picture credit: Modena Cathedral by Icco80 via Wikimedia Commons)

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Beniamino Gigli - opera singer

Tenor’s beautiful voice can still be appreciated today

One of the greatest tenors of the 20th century, Beniamino Gigli, died on this day in Rome in 1957.

The tenor Beniamino Gigli

Gigli is remembered for the beauty of his voice, which was powerful as well as mellow and smooth. He made many recordings, which have since been converted to CD and can still be enjoyed by opera lovers today. He also made some film appearances.

Gigli was born in Recanati near Ancona in the Marche in 1890. He sang in the choir at Recanati Cathedral as a boy and then went on to study music in Rome.

He won his first singing competition in Parma in 1914 and made his operatic debut in Rovigo in the same year, playing the role of Enzo in Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera, La Gioconda.

Gigli made his debut on the stage of La Scala in Milan in 1918 singing Faust in Boito’s Mefistofele. The orchestra was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. His first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York came two years later.

He became particularly associated with the roles of Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Boheme and the tile role in Giordano’s Andrea Chenier. His first appearance in London at Covent Garden was in Andrea Chenier in 1930.

Gigli rose to full international prominence after the death of Enrico Caruso in 1921 although experts have judged their voices to be very different.

The tenor also occasionally appeared on stage with his daughter, the soprano Rina Gigli, who was born in 1916.

Towards the end of his life he made appearances only at fundraising concerts. His last public appearance was at a concert in Washington two years before his death in Rome at the age of 67.

Travel tip:

Recanati is a town in the province of Macerati in the Marche region of Italy. The poet and writer Giacomo Leopardi was born there and it is also believed to be the place of origin of some of the Italian paternal ancestors of the Argentine footballer Lionel Messi.

Teatro alla Scala in Milan

Travel tip:

La Scala in Milan has a fascinating museum that displays costumes and memorabilia from the history of opera. The entrance is in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza Scala. It is open every day except the Italian Bank Holidays and a few days when it is closed in December. Opening hours are from 9.00 to 12.30 and 1.30 to 5.30pm.

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Amelita Galli-Curci soprano

Singer’s beautiful voice lives on thanks to early recordings

Amelita Galli-Curci, one of the most popular Italian opera singers and recording artists of the early 20th century, died on this day in 1963.

Galli-Curci was a ‘coloratura’ soprano and her voice has been described as ‘florid, vibrant, agile and able to perform trills.’

Although she was largely self-taught her voice was much admired and it has been claimed she was encouraged to become an opera singer by composer Pietro Mascagni, who was a family friend.

Milan's Duomo, in the heart of the 'music' district

She was born Amelita Galli in Milan in 1881 and studied the piano at the Milan Conser-

vatory, which is in the centre of the city close to the Duomo. She made her stage debut as a soprano at Trani in 1906, singing Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto. She was widely acclaimed and her career took off from there.

In 1908 she married an Italian nobleman, the Marquese Luigi Curci and she subsequently attached his surname to hers. She remained known as Amelita Galli-Curci even after they divorced.

She sang in just two performances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lamermoor with Enrico Caruso in Buenos Aires in 1915 but they went on to make wonderful recordings together.

Galli-Curci enjoyed immediate success in America after appearing as Gilda in Rigoletto in Chicago. It was while performing there in 1916 that she signed a contract with a recording company. Her voice can still be heard on surviving 78 rpm recordings and some of these have been copied on to vinyl and subsequently on to CD. Galli-Curci’s ‘Caro nome’ from Rigoletto is considered one of the greatest operatic recordings ever made.

She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1921 as Violetta in La Traviata and remained with the Met until ill health prompted her to retire from the stage in 1930.

She lived in California, where she taught singing, until her death at the age of 81.

Travel tip:

Milan’s Conservatory of Music (Conservatorio di Musica ‘Giuseppe Verdi’) is in Via Conservatorio, just off Via Pietro Mascagni, behind the Duomo. It is just a short walk from there to Teatro alla Scala in Piazza della Scala, with its fascinating museum focusing on the history of opera.

Travel tip

Trani, where Amelita Galli-Curci made her stage debut as a soprano, is a charming old port on the Adriatic in the region of Puglia. A major landmark is the 12th century Cattedrale di San Nicola Pellegrino, an imposing building overlooking the sea. Close by is the Castello Svevo, which was built to defend Trani in the 13th century.

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