Adriana Ferrarese del Bene (born c. 1755 in Ferrara

Ferrara

Ferrara is a city and comune in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north...

  - died after 1804 in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

) was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 operatic

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

. She was one of the first performers of Susanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and the first performer of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....

.

She has been known under a variety of names. The 1979 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera lists her as born Adriana Gabrieli and later known La Ferrarese (presumably from the city of her birth). However, Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...

notes that her identification with a Francesca Gabrielli, "detta la Ferrarese" ("called la Ferrarese"), whom Charles Burney

Charles Burney

Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...

 heard in Venice in 1770 is not based on solid evidence. What is known is that she married Luigi del Bene in 1782 and performed thereafter as Adriana Ferrarese (or Ferraresi) del Bene.

Adriana Ferrarese del Bene studied in Venice and performed in London before arriving in Vienna, where she made her reputation singing serious roles in opera buffa

Opera buffa

Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

.
The publication Rapport von Wien reported, "She has in addition to an unbelievable high register a striking low register and connoisseurs of music claim that in living memory no such voice has sounded within Vienna's walls."