- Vittoria Tesi
Vittoria Tesi ("La Fiorentina") (b
Florence , 13 Feb 1700; dVienna , 9 May 1775) was an Italianopera singer and music teacher of the 18th century. Hervocal range was that of acontralto . Her operatic career began with performances atParma andBologna in 1716. By 1718 she was "virtuosa di camera" for the Prince of Parma atVenice . The year later she was atDresden , singing forAntonio Lotti alongsideSenesino andMargherita Durastanti . By 1721 she was back in Italy for the Florentine Carnival, and for the next 26 years travelled Europe, with performances inMadrid and possiblyFrankfurt . Italy, however, was the nation where she spent most of her time, dividing the years between the various cities. Her career peaked in the late 1730s and 1740s, when she sang alongside such singers as Caffarelli; in 1744 she took the title role inGluck 's "Ipermestra" and did the same in 1748 in his "Semiramide riconosciuta", set to alibretto byMetastasio . This performance persuaded Metastasio of her merits, although previously he had been unenthusiastic, calling her a "grandissima nullità".After successful performances in
Niccolò Jommelli 's "Achille in Sciro" and "Didone abbandonata" (1749), both set to Metastasian libretti, Tesi began to retire from the stage. In 1751 she became costume director at the Viennese court, where she remained for many years, teaching music as a particular favourite of Countess Maria Theresia Ahlefeldt. Among her students were Caterina Gabrielli and Elisabeth Teyber, and she is known to have met not onlyCasanova but alsoMozart and his father. Ange and Sarah Goudar called her "perhaps the first actress who recited well while singing badly", while bothCharles Burney and Quantz also praised her acting ability.Reference
*GroveOnline|Vittoria Tesi|Gerhard Croll|7 November|2007
Further reading
*E.J. Dent: "Italian Opera in the 18th Century", SIMG, xiv (1912–13), 500–09
*A. Ademollo: "Le cantanti italiane celebri del secolo decimottavo: Vittoria Tesi", Nuova antologia, ser.3, xxii (1889), 308–27
*G.B. Mancini: "Pensieri e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato" (Milan, 1770/R)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.