Marietta Piccolomini

Marietta Piccolomini ca. 1860

Marietta Piccolomini (15 March 1834 - 23 December 1899)^{[Note 1][1]} was an Italian soprano.^[2]

Biography

Marietta Piccolomini was born Maria Teresa Violante Piccolomini Clementini in Siena (Sienna), Italy on 5 March 1834. She was descended from Italian nobility, ^{[Note 2]} and her parents were horrified at her wanting to pursue a career in opera, but she succeeded in persuading them to allow her to do so. From the age of four years, Marietta had amused herself at playing at mock theatrical representations. She used to sing duets with her mother, a skilful amateur, and she had been instructed by Romani, one of the first professional singing teachers in Italy.^[2]

Marietta had long implored her father to allow her to appear on the stage. At last she prevailed and she made her debut in Rome, November, 1852, in Donizetti's Poliuto and Antonio Cagnoni’s Don Bucefalo, under the guidance of her teacher, Romani. Then she appeared in her native town of Sienna and subsequently, she went to Florence, where she performed in Lucrezia Borgia.^{[Note 3][2]}

In Pisa in 1853, she sang Gilda in Rigoletto and in Turin in 1855 she sang Violetta in La Traviata, a role in which she became especially famous.^[2][3] The response in Turin was a spectacle not seen before in the world of entertainment. Throngs surrounded her hotel. Men tried to unharness the horses from her carriage so that they might draw it through the streets themselves but she would not permit this.^[2]

London

When word of her success in Turin reached Britain, she was invited to sing La Traviata at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, where she appeared for the first time on May 24, 1856. On May 5 she appeared in Lucia di Lammermoor. Due to her limited range of a little over two octaves, the music had to be transposed or adapted to suit her capabilities. Nevertheless, audiences received her well. On June 26, Piccolomini appeared for the first time as Maria, in La figlia del reggimento, and on July 26 in Don Pasquale. She also sang Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Although these performances revealed her inexperience, critics praised her dramatic ability. Following her season in England, Picolomini sang in Dublin with great success.^[2]

Paris

Picolomini's appearance in Paris in Traviata on December 6, 1856 was the first time the opera had been heard in France. Verdi tried to stop the opera from being performed at Théâtre des Italiens owing to lack of copyright for his operas in France at the time, as did Alexandre Dumas, who claimed copyright infringement of La Dame aux camélias, but without success.^[2] Again, while critics remarked on the limitations of her voice and singing, they praised her natural talent and stage presence.^[2]

When the Empress Eugénie heard that she had missed the most talked about première in Paris, she sent word to Calzado, the director of the theatre, and a command performance was arranged for the Emperor and her.^[2]

On tour in 1857

Piccolomini returned to the United Kinghdom on April 21, 1857 and performed in in La figlia del reggimento again and also in Don Giovanni, Lucia di Lammermoor and Le Nozze di Figaro. She had been working hard to improve her technique as a result of the criticism she had received the year before. She then made a provincial tour which included Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham, Brighton, and other places. Then she repaired again to Dublin. In November and December she went with Giuglini on a starring tour through Germany.^[2]

Retirement

Marietta Piccolomini died of pneumonia on 11 December 1899 at her villa in Florence. She is interred in the Cimitero delle Porte Sante.^[1]

Notes

1. ^ Conflicting dates for both her birth and death are widespread - birthdates include 5 and 15 March 1834; death dates indlude 11 February, and 11, 20 and 23 December 1899. The dates given in this article, are the ones that are given in Grove's Dictionary of Opera and appear most frequently on the World Wide Web.
2. ^ see Piccolomini
3. ^ This is frequently but erroneously given as her debut in biographical notes.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Blog Chitarra e Dintorni [1] (Italian)
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Ellen Creathorne Clayton (1863) Queens of Song, Smith, Elder & Co., London (digitized by Google Books)[2]
3. ^ Henry Fothergill Chorley (1862) Thirty years' Musical Recollections, Vol. 2, Hurst and Blackett, London (Digitized by Google Books) [3]

Persondata
Name	Piccolomini, Marietta
Alternative names
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Date of birth	15 March 1834
Place of birth
Date of death	23 December 1899
Place of death