Antonia Merighi
Encyclopedia
Antonia Margherita Merighi (born Bologna
– died by 1764) was an Italian contralto
active between 1711 and 1744 and particularly known today for her performances in operas by George Frideric Handel
.
as well as in Venice
, Parma
, Turin
, Mantua
, Naples
and her native Bologna, often in travesti
roles. In Naples, she created the role of Iarba in the premiere of Domenico Sarro
's Didone abbandonata
(Teatro San Bartolomeo, 1 February 1724) and appeared in at least 18 other opera
s there.
She moved to London in 1729, where for two seasons, she sang in many of Handel's operas, sometimes in roles created for her by the composer (Matilda in Lotario
, Rosmira in Partenope
and Erissena in Poro
), and sometimes in soprano
parts from earlier operas adapted for her voice. She returned again to London in 1736 and in 1738 where she sang in the premieres of three more operas by Handel as well as in operas by other composers. She also sang in Handel's benefit concert at the King's Theatre in 1738. According to Winton Dean
, her last opera performances appear to have been in Munich
during the 1740 Carnival season. After her retirement from the stage, she lived in Bologna. Merighi was married to the tenor
Carlo Carlani (1716–1776).
of 2 July 1729 published names and descriptions of the new singers for Handel's 1729 season at the King's Theatre:
Mary Delany
, Handel's life long friend and supporter, was one of the few invited to the rehearsals for the 1729 season. In a letter to a friend, she wrote of his new singer:
When Merighi returned for the 1736 season after an absence of several years, Delany wrote:
Merighi's acting ability (and that of the castrato
, Nicolo Grimaldi) was also noted by Giambattista Mancini
in his 1774 Pensieri e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato:
in London:
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
– died by 1764) was an Italian contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
active between 1711 and 1744 and particularly known today for her performances in operas by George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
.
Biography
Antonia Merighi's initial career was in Italy, where for several years she was a virtuosa singer at the court of Violante Beatrice, Grand Princess of Tuscany and sang in theatres in TuscanyTuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
as well as 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...
, Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
, Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
, Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...
, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
and her native Bologna, often in travesti
En travesti
Travesti is a theatrical term referring to the portrayal of a character in an opera, play, or ballet by a performer of the opposite sex. Some sources regard 'travesti' as an Italian term, some as French. Depending on sources, the term may be given as travesty, travesti, or en travesti...
roles. In Naples, she created the role of Iarba in the premiere of Domenico Sarro
Domenico Sarro
Domenico Natale Sarro, also Sarri was an Italian composer.He studied at the Neapolitan conservatory of S. Onofrio. He composed extensively in the early 18th century. His opera Didone abbandonata, premiered on 1 February 1724 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples, was the first setting of a major...
's Didone abbandonata
Didone abbandonata
Didone abbandonata is an opera libretto in 3 acts by Pietro Metastasio. It was his first original work and was set to music by Domenico Sarro in 1724...
(Teatro San Bartolomeo, 1 February 1724) and appeared in at least 18 other opera
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...
s there.
She moved to London in 1729, where for two seasons, she sang in many of Handel's operas, sometimes in roles created for her by the composer (Matilda in Lotario
Lotario
Lotario is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Antonio Salvi's Adelaide.-Performance history:...
, Rosmira in Partenope
Partenope
Partenope is an opera by George Frideric Handel, first performed at the King's Theatre in London on 24 February 1730.-Background:...
and Erissena in Poro
Poro (opera)
Poro, re dell'Indie is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel...
), and sometimes in 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...
parts from earlier operas adapted for her voice. She returned again to London in 1736 and in 1738 where she sang in the premieres of three more operas by Handel as well as in operas by other composers. She also sang in Handel's benefit concert at the King's Theatre in 1738. According to Winton Dean
Winton Dean
Winton Dean is an English musicologist of the 20th century, most famous for his research concerning the life and works—in particular the operas and oratorios—of Handel, as detailed in his book Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques .Dean was born in Birkenhead...
, her last opera performances appear to have been in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
during the 1740 Carnival season. After her retirement from the stage, she lived in Bologna. Merighi was married to the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Carlo Carlani (1716–1776).
Contemporary accounts
The Daily CourantDaily Courant
The Daily Courant was reputed to be the world's first regular daily newspaper, commencing in 1702 from premises in Fleet Street.It was first published on 11 March 1702 by Elizabeth Mallet from her premises "against the Ditch at Fleet Bridge". However, as people were not ready at the time to know...
of 2 July 1729 published names and descriptions of the new singers for Handel's 1729 season at the King's Theatre:
Mr. Handel, who is just returned from Italy, has contracted with the following persons to perform in the Italian opera: Sig. Bernacchi, who is esteemed the best singer in Italy; Signora Merighi, a woman of a very fine presence, an excellent actress, and a very good singer, with a counter-tenor voice ; Signora Strada, who hath a very fine treble voice, a person of singular merit; Sig. Annibale Pio Fabri, a most excellent tenor and a fine voice; his wife, performs a man's part exceedingly well; Signora Bertoldi, who is a very fine treble voice".
Mary Delany
Mary Delany
Mary Delany was an English Bluestocking, artist, and letter-writer; equally famous for her "paper-mosaicks" and her lively correspondence.-Early life:...
, Handel's life long friend and supporter, was one of the few invited to the rehearsals for the 1729 season. In a letter to a friend, she wrote of his new singer:
La Merighi [...] her voice is not extraordinarily good or bad. She is tall, and has a very graceful person with a tolerable face. She seems to be a woman about forty; she sings easily and agreeably.
When Merighi returned for the 1736 season after an absence of several years, Delany wrote:
Merighi — with no sound in her voice, but thundering action, a beauty with no other merit
Merighi's acting ability (and that of the castrato
Castrato
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
, Nicolo Grimaldi) was also noted by Giambattista Mancini
Giovanni Battista Mancini
Giovanni Battista Mancini was an Italian soprano castrato, voice teacher, and author of books on singing....
in his 1774 Pensieri e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato:
Nicola Grimaldi, alias Cavalier Niccolino, possessed the art of recitative and acting to such perfection that although he was very poor in other talents and did not have a beautiful voice, he became very singular. The same is true of Madame Merighi.
Handelian roles
Antonia Merighi is known to have sung the following roles in Handel's operas performed at the King's TheatreHer Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
in London:
- Matilda in LotarioLotarioLotario is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Antonio Salvi's Adelaide.-Performance history:...
(1729) - Rosmira in PartenopePartenopePartenope is an opera by George Frideric Handel, first performed at the King's Theatre in London on 24 February 1730.-Background:...
(1730) - Elisa in Tolomeo, re di EgittoTolomeoTolomeo, re d'Egitto is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's Tolomeo et Alessandro.-Performance history:...
(1730) - Armira in ScipioneScipioneScipione is an opera in three acts, with music composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1726. The librettist was Paolo Antonio Rolli. Handel composed Scipione whilst in the middle of writing Alessandro...
(1730) - Erissena in Poro, re dell'IndiePoro (opera)Poro, re dell'Indie is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel...
(1731, 1736) - Armida in RinaldoRinaldo (opera)Rinaldo is an opera by George Frideric Handel composed in 1711. It is the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill. The work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's...
(1731) - Unulfo in Rodelinda (1731)
- Gernando in FaramondoFaramondoFaramondo is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text adapted from Apostolo Zeno's Faramondo.-Performance history:...
(1738) - Giulia in Alessandro SeveroAlessandro SeveroAlessandro Severo is an opera by George Frideric Handel composed in 1738. It is one of Handel's three pasticcio works, made up of the music and arias of his previous operas Giustino, Berenice and Arminio...
(1738) - Amastre in SerseSerseSerse is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694...
(1738)
Sources
- Casaglia, Gherardo, "Antonia Merighi", Almanacco Amadeus, 2005. Accessed 13 November 2009 (in Italian).
- Croce, Benedetto, I Teatri Di Napoli, Secolo XV-XVIII, originally published in 1891 and published in facsimile by BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009. ISBN 111315733X
- Dean, Winton, "Merighi, Antonia Margherita", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and MusiciansGrove Dictionary of Music and MusiciansThe 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...
2nd Edition, Vol 12, 2001. ISBN 0333608003 - Delany, Mary, The autobiography and correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany (edited and annotated by Lady Augusta Waddington Hall Llanover), R. Bentley, 1861
- Mancini, Giambattista, Practical reflections on the figurative art of singing, English translation by Pietro Buzzi, R. G. Badger, 1912 (originally published 1774 in Italian as Pensieri e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato) ,
- Streatfeild, Richard Alexander, Handel, London: Methuen & Co., 1910.