Voice

Member of Baglioni family (opera)

(fl 1753–88). Italian soprano, daughter of Francesco Baglioni. In 1753–9 she toured northern Italy with her father and one or two sisters, appearing in five comic operas at Venice in 1754–5. She also performed there in 1760–65 and 1775–8. Although best known for comic roles, she also sang in opera seria, appearing at Turin in 1759–60 (Galuppi’s La clemenza di Tito, Traetta’s Enea nel Lazio) and at Parma in 1761 and 1763 (J. C. Bach’s Catone in Utica). In 1762 she was in Milan and Vienna (Hasse’s Il trionfo di Clelia) and in 1767 in Naples, by which time she had married Domenico Poggi. She returned to Vienna where, in 1768, Mozart wrote for her the elaborate part of Rosina in La finta semplice, which however she never performed. She sang in Vienna in 1772–4 with her sisters Costanza and Rosina, and may have done so in Paris in ...

[Carnace]

Member of Baglioni family (opera)

(fl 1729–62). Italian bass and impresario. He was a comic opera singer who began singing intermezzos in the late 1720s in Foligno and Pesaro. He launched his comic opera career in Rome in 1738 with Gaetano Latilla’s La finta cameriera and Madama Ciana and Rinaldo da Capua’s La commedia in commedia. Productions throughout northern Italy of these operas along with another first performed in Rome, Rinaldo da Capua’s La libertà nociva (1740), dominated Baglioni’s career for the next decade. In 1749 he appeared in the dramma giocoso L’Arcadia in Brenta in Venice, the first collaboration between Galuppi and Goldoni, and for the remainder of his career he primarily sang texts written by Goldoni, in cities along the axis from Venice to Turin. According to the libretto of Lo speziale (1755, Venice; music by Vincenzo Pallavicini and Domenico Fischietti), Baglioni was a member of Girolamo Medebach’s opera troupe. Three of his daughters appeared in productions with him: Giovanna from ...

Member of Baglioni family (opera)

(fl 1752–1770s). Italian soprano, daughter of Francesco Baglioni. She began her career singing with her father in productions of comic opera. Her first role was Eugenia, a serious part in Galuppi’s comic Arcifanfano, re dei matti (1752, Parma). She continued to sing serious roles in productions of comic opera in northern Italy with her father and her sisters in the early 1760s; by ...

Member of Bannister family

(b Newland, Gloucs., 1741; d London, Oct 19, 1804). English bass and actor. He had a fine, untaught voice and sang roles including Macheath and Hawthorne in Norwich before his Drury Lane début as Merlin in Michael Arne’s Cymon (1767). In 1768 he created Don Diego in The Padlock and for over 20 years was given leading roles in musical pieces by Dibdin, Shield and Arnold. Tom Tug in The Waterman and Steady in The Quaker were two of his successes; he was also admired for his Grimbald (King Arthur), Hecate and Caliban. According to the Thespian Dictionary his voice ‘was a strong, clear bass, with one of the most extensive falsettos ever heard’. In the early 1780s he was an incomparable Polly in travesty performances of The Beggar’s Opera. There, as in his famous imitations of the castratos, the humour lay in brilliantly accurate mimicry and not in exaggerated burlesque. Convivial, improvident, witty and good-natured, he was said to attribute his vocal stamina to gargling with port wine....

[née Harper]

Member of Bannister family

(bap. Bath, Nov 22, 1757; d London, Jan 15, 1849). English soprano. She was admired as a charming woman with a pure voice and unadorned singing style. Most of her stage career was spent in summer seasons at the Haymarket, where she sang from 1778 and created many roles in operas by Shield and Arnold, including Eliza in The Flitch of Bacon and Laura in The Agreeable Surprise. She also sang in concerts and was at Covent Garden from 1781 to 1786, creating the title role in Shield’s Rosina. She married the actor John Bannister in 1783, reputedly teaching him to sing and turning him into a model husband and father. She retired in 1792 to ‘trim Friendship’s lamp round her family fire’.

Member of Bannister family

(b Deptford, London, May 12, 1760; d London, Nov 7, 1836). English actor and baritone, son of Charles Bannister. During his career he played, according to his Memories, well over 400 different parts. He became a favourite comic actor and after his marriage to the soprano Elizabeth Harper in 1783 he began to take singing roles. Robson praised his voice as ‘full, round, clear, manly, and intelligible’ and declared: ‘everybody loved Jack Bannister’. In Storace’s operas, from The Haunted Tower (1789) onwards, he and Nancy Storace were frequently paired as the secondary lovers and Kelly later wrote roles for him. In Storace’s exuberant afterpiece The Three and the Deuce (1795) he played identical triplets, while as Walter, the saviour of the babes in Arnold’s The Children in the Wood, he delighted audiences from 1793 until his farewell performance in ...

Member of Bland family

(b ?1768/9; d London Jan 15, 1838). English soprano and actress. She was said to have had Italian Jewish parents who came to England when she was very young and, despite reports of a certificate stating that she was born and baptized at Caen in Normandy in September 1770, it seems almost certain that she was the ‘Italian Lady (four years old)’ who sang with the conjurer Breslaw and his Italian company at Hughes's Riding School near Blackfriars Bridge in May 1773. After further seasons with Breslaw she sang in 1780 with an Italian puppet show and the next year was in a pastoral medley at the Italian Opera and sang Cupid in King Arthur at Drury Lane. Miss Romanzini was a leading member of Charles Dibdin's child company at the Royal Circus, and then sang principal female roles in English operas in Dublin in ...

The earliest choral singing in Boston was the first settlers’ congregational psalm singing, which continued through later times of controversy over the relative virtues of the old style and the cultivated new style promoted in the singing schools. Church and community choirs were formed throughout New England from the 1750s. The work of George K. Jackson, who in 1812 organized a concert of Handel’s music, was instrumental in broadening the musical repertory of Boston’s churches.

The Handel and Haydn Society was formed for the purpose of ‘cultivating and improving a correct taste in the performance of sacred music, and also to introduce into more general practice the works of Handel, Haydn, and other eminent composers’. It gave its first concert on 25 December 1815 and served as the prototype for similar organizations in other cities. At Christmas 1818 the society gave its first performance of the complete Messiah; on 16 February 1819...

(b London, England, March 20, 1774; d London, England, Feb 17, 1856). English tenor and composer. He made his debut as a boy soprano at Covent Garden in 1787. He sang in Europe after his voice broke, returning to England at the turn of the century, where he established a reputation as one of the country’s leading tenors. He traveled to the United States in the autumn of 1840 and, at the age of 68, “surpassed all expectations” with the “pathos, sublimity, power, and wonderful execution” of his voice. He appeared first in concert, with a selection of tenor and baritone airs from opera and oratorio mixed with popular ballads. His American operatic debut, at the Park Theatre in New York, was in Stephen Storace’s The Siege of Belgrade, and he went on to re-create many of his famous roles, in Charles Horn’s The Devil’s Bridge, Thomas Dibdin’s The Cabinet, and Weber’s Der Freischütz. At one point he astonished audiences and critics by appearing in seven demanding roles in less than two weeks....

Member of Carr family

(b London, Sept 12, 1768; d Philadelphia, May 24, 1831). American composer, tenor, organist and publisher of English birth, son of Joseph Carr. His uncle was Benjamin Carr (1731–80), who ran an instrument-making and repair shop in London for over 20 years. He studied the organ with Charles Wesley (ii) and composition with Samuel Arnold, and probably learnt engraving at his father's shop in London. After 1789 he assisted Arnold as harpsichordist and principal tenor for the Academy of Ancient Music, and his earliest known opera, Philander and Silvia, was performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre in October 1792. He emigrated to Philadelphia no later than July 1793 where he opened a music shop selling instruments and sheet music. From February to July 1794 he worked as a composer and arranger for Philadelphia's New Theatre, and he made his stage début in Philadelphia on 22 September with the Old American Company. He accompanied the Old Americans back to New York in ...

See also Chorus (i)

During the last years of his life Handel’s oratorios were increasingly performed in the English provinces, generally in conformity with practices familiar in London. His death turned what had already become a cult almost into a religion. In 1759 there were many commemorative Handel performances, not only in London but also in Oxford, Cambridge and other large towns and in the small village of Church Langton, near Leicester, where there was a two-day festival. In the same year, at the Three Choirs Festival at Hereford, Messiah, which like the other oratorios had been previously performed only in secular buildings, was for the first time sung in a cathedral. Almost from the beginning of Handel’s career as an oratorio composer, the profits on performances of his works had helped sustain charities, and as the need for investment in hospitals became more urgent, so the cult of Handel, assisted by the editions of Randall and Arnold, grew even stronger during the remainder of the 18th century....

Member of Corfe family

(b Salisbury, bap. Feb 9, 1741; d Salisbury, July 29, 1820). English organist and tenor, son of Joseph Corfe (b 1705). He was a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, 1752–3, lay vicar, 1759–60, and was apprenticed to the cathedral organist John Stephens. He was made a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1783 and in 1784 sang at the Handel Commemoration. He was also organist of Salisbury Cathedral from 1792 to 1804. Joseph was a respected singing teacher with Nancy Storace and Mrs Second among his pupils. He married Mary Bernard on 14 April 1766 and they probably had three sons. His published works include A Treatise on Singing (1799), Sacred Music (1800), The Beauties of Handel (1803), Beauties of Purcell (c1805), Thorough Bass Simplified (1805) and Church Music (c1810...

[Fanny]

Member of Corri family

(b Edinburgh, 1795/1801; d after 1833). Italian mezzo-soprano, daughter of Natale Corri. She was first taught singing by her father, but was soon taken to London and sent for lessons first to Braham, then to Angelica Catalani, with whom she toured the Continent in 1815–16. She made a promising début as the Countess in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the King’s Theatre on 17 January 1818, singing regularly there and at Philharmonic Society concerts until 1821, when she left with her father and sisters Rosalie and Angelina for the Continent. She sang first in Munich, then in Italy, where she married the bass Giuseppe Paltoni and made her home. She sang at La Scala, Milan, in 1828–9 and undertook successful tours of Spain (1827) and Germany (1830). Her last recorded appearance was in a performance of Bellini’s ...

Member of Corri family

(b Edinburgh, ?1784; d Baltimore, Feb 19, 1832). Italian composer, tenor, pianist, and teacher, son of Domenico Corri, and possibly twin brother of Montague Philip Corri. As P. Antony Corri he was well established as a composer in London from about 1802 to 1816, when many of his piano pieces and songs were published. His L’anima di musica (1810) is the most extensive piano tutor of its period, and ran to several editions. He was a founder of the London Philharmonic Society and the Royal Academy of Music in 1813, and was director of the Professional Society in 1816. He was expelled from the Philharmonic in December 1816 (due to a scandal probably involving his wife) and emigrated to the USA, where he settled in Baltimore by autumn 1817. There he was christened Arthur Clifton on 31 December 1817 and remarried the following day. He served as organist of the First Presbyterian Church (...

Member of Danzi family

(b Munich, 1768; d Munich, June 11, 1800). German soprano and composer. She was the daughter of the singer, actor, and theatre director Theobald Marchand, who came from Strasbourg and whose troupe was active in Mainz, Frankfurt, Mannheim, and Munich. From an early age she played children’s roles in the theatre and performed as a pianist and singer. In Munich she received tuition from the soprano Franziska Lebrun (née Danzi), who later became her sister-in-law. She and her younger brother Heinrich lived in Salzburg from 1781 to 1784 with Leopold Mozart, who taught her singing and the keyboard (she is often mentioned in his letters as ‘Gretl’). He supported her first attempts at composition (sonatas for piano or for violin and piano) and tried to have them published by the Viennese publisher Christoph Torricella, but without success. Wolfgang Mozart heard her sing on his visits to Salzburg in ...

Member of Dérivis family

(b Albi, Aug 2, 1780; d Livry, Seine et Oise, Feb 1, 1856). French bass. He made his début in 1803 at the Paris Opéra, where he was engaged until 1828. He created the Pontifex Maximus in Spontini’s La Vestale (1807) and the High Priest in the same composer’s ...

[‘Francesina’]

(b c 1715; bur. Hammersmith, Middlesex, July 20, 1778). French soprano. Although her birth name was Duparc, she was known professionally as Francesina. Trained in Italy, she sang in several operas at Florence, Pistoia, and Lucca in 1731–5. In 1736 she was engaged by the Opera of the Nobility for London; her first appearance there was on November 15, when she sang and danced before members of the royal family at Kensington Palace. The following week she made her King’s Theatre début in Hasse’s Siroe, and went on to sing in operas by Broschi, Pescetti, Veracini, and Duni. The following season (1737–8) she appeared in operas by Pescetti and Veracini, Handel’s new operas Faramondo (Clotilde) and Serse (Romilda), and his pasticcio Alessandro Severo (Sallustia). From then she was known almost exclusively as a Handel singer. She was his leading soprano at the King’s Theatre in early ...

[Mainvielle-Fodor]

Member of Fodor family

(b Paris, Oct 13, 1789; d Saint Genis-Laval, Aug 14, 1870). French soprano, daughter of Josephus Andreas Fodor. She studied in St Petersburg with Eliodoro Bianchi. After some public appearances as a pianist and harpist, she made her stage début about 1810 in Fioravanti’s Le cantatrici villane. In 1812 she married the French actor Mainvielle, and after singing in Stockholm and Copenhagen, returned to Paris, where she made her début at the Opéra-Comique on 9 August 1814 in Grétry’s La fausse magie and Berton’s Le concert interrompu; she also sang in numerous roles at the Théâtre Italien. Her London début was in 1816 as Paer’s Griselda at the King’s Theatre, where her many other roles included Mozart’s Vitellia, Fiordiligi, Countess Almaviva, Zerlina and Susanna. The Morning Post described her voice as ‘rich, harmonious, and, without possessing extraordinary power, of a considerable compass. Her taste is chaste, her execution correct, easy and elegant, and her science evidently profound. To the brilliance of ornamental flights, she joins the still greater charm of feeling’....

Member of Gerl family

(b Andorf, Upper Austria, Nov 30, 1764; d Mannheim, March 9, 1827). Austrian bass and composer. The son of a village schoolmaster and organist, Gerl by 1777 was an alto chorister at Salzburg, where he must have been a pupil of Leopold Mozart. He was at the Salzburg Gymnasium from 1778 until 1782 and he then went on to study logic and physics at the university. In the autumn of 1785 he went to Erlangen as a bass, joining the theatrical company of Ludwig Schmidt, who had been at Salzburg earlier that year. In the autumn of 1786 he joined G.F.W. Grossmann’s company, performing in the Rhineland, and specialized in ‘comic roles in comedies and Singspiele’. By 1787 he was a member of Schikaneder’s company at Regensburg, making his début in Sarti’s Wenn zwei sich streiten (Fra i due litiganti) and appearing as Osmin in ...