Maddalena Allegranti

Maddalena Allegranti (b. 1754) was a pupil of
Holtzbauer of Mannheim, and appeared for thefirst time at Venice in 1771. After singing at other theatres in Italy, she went in 1774 toGermany, where she continued to perform at Mannheim and Ratisbon till the year 1779,when she returned to Venice. She sang there at the theatre of San Samuele during the Carnival,and eventually came to England in 1781. Here she was enthusiastically admired in her firstopera, "Viaggiatori felici" by Pasquale Anfossi.

Her voice, though thin, was extremely sweet, of extraordinarycompass upwards, and so flexible as to lead her to indulge in a flowery style of singingwhich had then the merit of considerable novelty. She was also a good actress. But itwas soon found that there was a great sameness in her manner and embellishments, and shebecame gradually so disregarded, by the end of her second season, that she went to Dresden,where the Elector engaged her at a salary of a thousand ducats. She came a second time toLondon, many years later, and reappeared in Cimarosa's "Il matrimonio segreto". Never wasa more pitiable attempt; she had scarcely a thread of voice remaining nor the power to singa note in tune: her figure and acting were equally altered for the worse, and after a fewnights she was obliged to retire, and quit the stage for ever. She performed in oratorio in1799. A pretty portrait of Allegranti is engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi, after Cosway.

External links

* [http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgtitle_tree.cfm?title_id=297286&level=8 Print of Maddalena Allegranti from the NYPL Digital Gallery]

=Reference=
*Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition