Francesca Cuzzoni
This article includes a improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2013) ) |
Francesca Cuzzoni (2 April 1696 – 19 June 1778) was an Italian operatic
Early career
Cuzzoni was born in
Cuzzoni's first visit to London
Cuzzoni's arrival in the English capital was keenly anticipated in the press. Though the "London Journal" for 27 October 1722 reported that "Mrs. Cotsona [sic], an extraordinary Italian Lady, ... is expected daily", she apparently found time to marry Pietro Giuseppe Sandoni during her journey, and did not make her debut in London until 12 January 1723, creating the role of Teofane in Handel's Ottone at the King's Theatre, Haymarket. To an aria in her role, "Falsa immagine", there is attached a famous story, vividly illustrating both her character and that of the composer. The part not having been originally intended for her (but perhaps for Maddalena Salvai), at rehearsal she refused to sing this, her first aria. According to the historian John Mainwaring, Handel replied: "Oh! Madame I know well that you are a real she-devil, but I hereby give you notice, me, that I am Beelzebub, the Chief of Devils." Mainwaring continued: "With this, he took her up by the waist, and, if she made any more words, swore that he would fling her out of the window." According to Burney, her singing of this aria "fixed her reputation as an expressive and pathetic singer", and her success was such that the price of half-guinea opera tickets reportedly shot up to four guineas. By the time of her benefit concert only two months later, some noblemen were believed to be giving her fifty guineas a ticket. Her salary was also large: £2000 a season. Her appearance was no recommendation: Burney described her as "short and squat, with a doughy cross face, but fine complexion; ... not a good actress; dressed ill; and was silly and fantastical."
Cuzzoni was a member of Handel's
A continental interlude
Cuzzoni spent the winter of 1728-29 in Vienna at the invitation of Count Kinsky (Imperial Ambasasador to London), but, in spite of her great success there was not engaged by the opera because she demanded too high a salary. Later in 1729 she sang at Modena and Venice, and in the autumn of that year, Handel's impresario Heidegger wished to engage both her and Faustina for the new "Second Royal Academy". Handel had had enough of both of them, however, and so Cuzzoni went instead to Bologna, Naples, Piacenza and Venice during 1730-31, and Bologna and Florence again during the following season, when, amongst others, she sang in operas by her husband (she never performed under his name). Their association continued during the carnival seasons of 1733 and 1734, when she appeared at Genoa.
In London again
In 1733, a group of English aristocrats wished to set up an opera company to rival Handel's, and Cuzzoni was one of the first singers they approached. She returned in April 1734, joining the cast of
Later career
Nonetheless, Cuzzoni was still a force to be reckoned with. After the collapse of the Nobility Opera, she returned to the continent, singing in Florence in 1737-38, and at Turin the following year, when, for one carnival season, she received the huge fee of 8,000 lire. Later that year she sang at Vienna, and seems to have made her last operatic appearances in Hamburg in 1740. On 17 September 1741 the "London Daily Post" reported that Cuzzoni was to be beheaded for poisoning her husband, but, though they had separated by 1742, he did not die until 1748. She sang concerts in Amsterdam in 1742, and by December 1745 had become a court singer in Stuttgart. In debt, a condition she frequently suffered in her later life, she absconded from there to Bologna in 1748. Still needing to perform to pay her creditors, she was again in London in 1750, where Burney heard her "thin cracked voice" in a concert on 18 May. On 2 August of that year Horace Walpole wrote that "old Cuzzoni" had been arrested for a debt of £30, and bailed by the Prince of Wales. On 20 May 1751, the "General Advertiser" gave notice of a final benefit concert for Cuzzoni, accompanied by a letter from the singer in which she wrote: "I am so extremely sensible of the many Obligations I have already received from the Nobility and Gentry of this Kingdom ... that nothing but extreme necessity and a desire of doing justice, could induce me to trouble them again, but being unhappily involved in a few Debts, am extremely desirous of attempting every Thing in my Power to pay them, before I quit England ..."
Of her last years, little is known, save that she returned once more to the continent, and lived a poverty-stricken existence, eking out a living, it is said, making buttons. She died in Bologna. Of the two children she seems to have had by Sandoni, nothing is known - they may have died in infancy.
Cuzzoni as an artist
Clearly, in her prime, Cuzzoni was a singer and artist of the first class. The well-known writer on singing, Giovanni Battista Mancini, gave a glowing testament to her art:
"It is difficult to decide whether she excels more in slow or in rapid airs. A "native warble" enabled her to execute divisions with such facility as to conceal their difficulty. So grateful and touching was her natural tone that she rendered pathetic whatever she sang, when she had the opportunity to unfold the whole volume of her voice. Her power of conducting, sustaining, increasing, and diminishing her notes by minute degrees acquired for her the credit of being a complete mistress of her art. Her trill was perfect: she had a creative fancy, and a command of tempo rubato. Her high notes were unrivaled in clearness and sweetness, and her intonation was so absolutely true that she seemed incapable of singing out of tune. She had a compass of two octaves, C to C in alt. Her style was unaffected, simple, and sympathetic."
Quantz wrote that "her style of singing was innocent and affecting" and that her ornaments "took possession of the soul of every auditor, by her tender and touching expression".
References
- Dean, W. & Vitali, C. (2001). "Cuzzoni, Francesca". In ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
- L. Goldman (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, article "Cuzzoni, Francesca" by O. Baldwin and T. Wilson, consulted online 22 August 2007
- C. Burney, A General History of Music (London, 1789), Vol.4
- O. E. Deutsch, Handel, a Documentary Biography (London, 1955)
- J. Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760), p 110-111 [my translation of the first sentence - Handel spoke to Cuzzoni in French]
- G.B. Mancini, Pensieri e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato (Vienna, 1774)
- S Ograjenšek: "Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni: the Rival Queens?" 'Handel and the Divas' exhibition catalogue, Handel House Museum, London 2008, p 3-7
Further reading
- C. Wier, "A Nest of Nightingales: Cuzzoni and Senesino at Handel's Royal Academy of Music," article in Theatre Survey 51:2 (November 2010).