Margaret Butler,
Associate Professor of Musicology,
University of Florida
The image of the prima donna brings to mind the iconic operas of Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, and Puccini; or seventheeth-century Venice; or Handel in London; or early 20th-century American entertainment. Eclipsed by the castrato, the prima donna in Italian opera seria between 1750 and 90, by contrast, has yet to receive the attention she merits. These decades witnessed the revitalization of Europe's leading operatic genre, the expansion of the professional singer's international network, and sovereignty's transformation in an increasingly cosmopolitan Europe: all contexts in which the prima donna played a vital role.
Soprano Caterina Gabrielli (1730-96) outshone her contemporaries in the views of critics. Foregrounding her experience in a long view of a group whose history is not yet written prompts basic questions: how was operatic celebrity created and performed in the late eighteenth century? What links this group to similar ones of the past and future? Finally, how did generic conventions condition the group's identity and determine its role in the operatic genre's historiography? To approach these questions, in this paper I examine Gabrielli within the framework of the careers and reception of three contemporaries, Lucrezia Aguiari, Luigia Todi, and Brigida Giorgi Banti, all successful prime donne in opera seria. I explore the prima donna's role in a city and theatrical institution's cultural memory and in the construction of a public persona. I draw on sources by the era's leading composers (Traetta, Paisiello, and others), encomia, librettos, and historiographical evidence to examine the creation and performance of celebrity in the late eighteenth century within opera seria culture and the prima donna's rise to prominence.
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