Giuseppina Grassini
Encyclopedia
Varese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
, Italy
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...
– January 3, 1850 in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
) was a noted 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...
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...
, and a singing teacher. She was also one of Napoleon's lovers as well as lover to the Duke of Wellington
Duke of Wellington
The Dukedom of Wellington, derived from Wellington in Somerset, is a hereditary title in the senior rank of the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The first holder of the title was Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington , the noted Irish-born career British Army officer and statesman, and...
.
Biography
After growing up under the musical guidance of her mother, an amateur violinist, and Domenico Zucchinetti in VareseVarese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
, and Antonio Secchi in Milan, Grassini made her stage début in 1789 in 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....
singing in Guglielmi
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer.Guglielmi was born in Massa. He received his first musical education from his father, and afterwards studied under Francesco Durante at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples...
’s La pastorella nobile, and the following year at Milan’s La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
in three opere buffe among which included Guglielmi
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer.Guglielmi was born in Massa. He received his first musical education from his father, and afterwards studied under Francesco Durante at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples...
’s La bella pescatrice. These first comic performances were not a great success, and Grassini was driven to resume the study of singing and to turn to drama.
Beginnings and Italian career apex
From 1792 she returned fully to the stage in the theatres of VicenzaVicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, 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...
, Milan again, 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 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...
. She sang (among others) in the first Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
performance of Zingarelli
Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli
Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli was an Italian composer, chiefly of opera.-Early career:Zingarelli was born in Naples, where he studied at the Santa Maria di Loreto Conservatory under Fenaroli and Speranza....
’s Artaserse (1793), in the première of Portugal’s Demofoonte (1794), in Bertoni
Ferdinando Bertoni
Ferdinando Bertoni was an Italian composer and organist.He was born in Salò, and began his music studies in Brescia, not far from his birthplace. Around 1740 he went to Bologna, where he studied till 1745 with the famous music theorist Giovanni Battista Martini...
’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Euridice), in Mayr’s Telemaco nell’isola di Calipso (première, 1797), in Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school...
’s Artemisia regina di Caria (première, 1797) and in the first Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
performance of Nasolini’s La morte di Semiramide (1798, title role). Her year of glory, however, was 1796, when she created two roles which remained in the repertoire for some decades and are now famous, in both appearing beside the 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...
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...
Girolamo Crescentini
Girolamo Crescentini
Girolamo Crescentini was a noted Italian singer castrato , a singing teacher and a composer.-Biography:He studied in Bologna with the noted teacher Lorenzo Gibelli and made his debut in 1783, quite advanced in years as a castrato...
, who was also Grassini's master and whose teachings she followed faithfully throughout her life. Nicola Zingarelli wrote the part of Giulietta for her in his opera Giulietta e Romeo
Giulietta e Romeo
Giulietta e Romeo is a dramma per musica by composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli with an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa after the 1530 novella of the same name by Luigi da Porto...
, staged at Milan’s La Scala on January 30, while Domenico Cimarosa composed the role of Horatia (Orazia) in Gli Orazi e i Curiazi
Gli Orazi e i Curiazi
Gli Orazi e i Curiazi is an opera in three acts composed by Domenico Cimarosa to a libretto by Antonio Simeone Sografi, based on Pierre Corneille's tragedy, Horace.-History:...
, staged instead in northern Italy’s second most important theatre, 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...
’s La Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
, on December 26. In that same year Grassini took part moreover in a third première of Gaetano Marinelli's Issipile, which was by no means as successful as the others.
Napoleonic period and retirement
On June 4, 1800, shortly before the victory at Marengo, while interpreting Andreozzi’s La vergine del sole at La Scala, Milan, Grassini (who was, by this time, already well known for her unruly love affairs) made a strong hit with Napoleon Bonaparte. He enrolled her among his lovers and brought her to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where she sang in several concerts. Grassini’s relationship with the First Consul was probably not convenient, but it was a sign of her modern, free attitude, so that when she in turn took a liking to the violinist Pierre Rode
Pierre Rode
Jacques Pierre Joseph Rode was a French violinist and composer.-Biography:Born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France, Pierre Rode traveled to Parisat the age of 13 and soon became a favourite pupil of the great Giovanni Battista Viotti who found the boy so talented that he charged him no fee for the...
, she did not hesitate to embark upon a fresh affair with him (practically under the nose of the future Emperor), and to quit Paris for a 1801 concert tour in Holland and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, returning finally to Italy.
In the years 1804 and 1805 Grassini was in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where, at the King's Theatre, she sang in some revivals of Andreozzi’s La vergine del sole, Nasolini’s La morte di Cleopatra and Fioravanti
Valentino Fioravanti
Valentino Fioravanti was a celebrated Italian composer of opera buffas.One of the best opera buffa composers between Domenico Cimarosa and Gioacchino Rossini. He was especially popular in Naples, and was the first in Italy to introduce spoken dialogue in the French manner in his works, sometimes...
’s Camilla, as well as in the premières of von Winter
Peter Winter
Peter Winter was a German opera composer who followed Mozart and preceded Weber, acting as a bridge between the two in the development of German opera....
’s Il ratto di Proserpina and Zaira. In “Il ratto” there appeared Elizabeth Billington
Elizabeth Billington
Elizabeth Billington was a British opera singer born in London, her father being a German clarinetist named Carl Friedrich Weichsel , and her mother Fredericka Weichsel née Weirman , a popular singer. Her brother, Charles Weichsel Elizabeth Billington (1765 or 1768 in London – 25 August 1818 in...
, too, and the two prima-donnas confronted each other in a singing contest from which the Italian singer emerged triumphant.
In 1806 Grassini returned to Paris together with her former master Crescentini, where she was appointed first chamber virtuosa of Emperor Napoleon. At the Tuileries Palace
Tuileries Palace
The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...
Grassini was on stage as the protagonist in the première of Paër
Ferdinando Paer
-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...
’s La Didone and in Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....
’s Pimmalione
Pimmalione
Pimmalione is an opera in one act by Luigi Cherubini, first performed at the Théâtre des Tuileries, Paris on 30 November 1809. The libretto is an adaptation by Stefano Vestris of Antonio Simone Sografi's Italian translation of the text Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote for his scène lyrique Pygmalion...
.
After settling in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
during Napoleon’s exile on the Isle of Elba, she went back to Paris during the Hundred Days
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
. Having stayed there after the Restoration, she also became the lover of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
. He was at that time appointed British ambassador in France, but Grassini was soon forced to leave French territory because Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
was unwilling to tolerate the great popularity of Napoleon’s former lover.
After a further stay in London, where she had been engaged at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, and where she took part in the première of Pucitta
Vincenzo Pucitta
Vincenzo Pucitta was a nineteenth-century Italian composer. Born in Civitavecchia, he wrote more than 20 operas during his career. One of his works, La Vestale, after its premiere in London , was also sung in Lisbon , Milan and Rio de Janeiro...
’s Aristodemo, she eventually made her way back to Italy and there continued to sing in operatic theatres. She sang in Brescia
Brescia
Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...
, Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and, in 1817, again at La Scala, without, however, achieving such success as formerly she had been accorded. She retired from the stage in 1823 and finally settled in Milan, giving herself up also to teaching, among other pupils, Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Pasta , born in Saronno, Italy, was a soprano considered among the greatest of opera singers, to whom the 20th-century soprano Maria Callas was compared.-Studies and career:...
and her own nieces Giulia
Giulia Grisi
Giulia Grisi, also known as Madame De Candia was an Italian opera singer...
and Giuditta Grisi
Giuditta Grisi
Giuditta Grisi was an Italian operatic mezzo-soprano, sister of soprano Giulia Grisi and cousin of ballerina Carlotta Grisi....
. She died at the age of 76 in 1850.
Artistic style
Although critics as usual could not agree, Giuseppina Grassini was undoubtedly one of the greatest stage singers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Commonly classed as a contraltoContralto
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...
, Grassini sang, in fact, in tessiture
Tessitura
In music, the term tessitura generally describes the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or, less frequently, musical instrument; the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre...
which would later be ascribed to mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
s and had rather a narrow vocal range. She could however rely upon a voice of great power and volume and, at the same time, of considerable pliability, to which she added excellent interpretative capability and, moreover, extraordinary physical beauty. This last quality made her not only the subject of many love affairs but also the ideal model for many contemporary painters including Andrea Appiani
Andrea Appiani
Andrea Appiani was an Italian neoclassical painter.-Biography:He was born in Milan. He had been intended to follow his father's career in medicine but instead entered the private academy of the painter Carlo Maria Giudici . He received instruction in drawing, copying mainly from sculpture and prints...
.
Faithful to her "old" master and partner Crescentini's musical ideals, Grassini would always stand beside such singers as the castrato Gaspare Pacchiarotti, the tenors Matteo Babini
Matteo Babini
Matteo Antonio Babini , also known by the family name of Babbini, was a leading Italian tenor of the late 18th-century, and a teacher of singing and stage art.-Life and Career:Matteo Babini was born in Bologna on ....
, Giovanni Ansani and Giacomo David
Giacomo David
Giacomo David , was a leading Italian tenor of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Biography:...
, the prime-donne Brigida Banti
Brigida Banti
Brigida Giorgi, better known by her husband's surname and her stage-name, as Brigida Banti was an Italian soprano.- Obscure beginnings :...
and Luísa Todi de Agujar
Luísa Todi
Luísa Rosa de Aguiar Todi was a popular and successful Portuguese mezzo-soprano opera singer.Luísa Todi was born Luísa Rosa de Aguiar on January 9, 1753 in Setúbal, Portugal. In 1765, her family moved to Lisbon, where her father was a musical writer in the Theatre of Bairro Alto.Luísa began her...
. These were the singers who opposed the belcanto drift of the second half of the 18th century, with its break-neck run after extremely high notes and aimlessly pyrotechnic, inexpressive, and therefore absurd coloratura
Coloratura
Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...
; and who endeavoured, instead, to recover “the passion and vigour” that had permeated the golden age of singing of the first half of the century.
She was therefore one of a particular group of leading singers who in this way helped to establish a new artistic trend, which soon evolved into 'the Rossini grand finale' of an entire musical era. Being the youngest of all the mentioned singers, Grassini herself formed a living link between them and the following generation. Acute (as usual) when writing about opera, Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
observed of his favourite singer of the new generation, Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Pasta
Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Pasta , born in Saronno, Italy, was a soprano considered among the greatest of opera singers, to whom the 20th-century soprano Maria Callas was compared.-Studies and career:...
:
- and by whose side, Stendhal could have added, she was an ideal Curiatius in several revivals of Cimarosa’s opera.
"(She) is probably too young to have seen Todi, Pacchierotti, MarchesiLuigi MarchesiLuigi Marchesi was an Italian castrato singer, one of the most prominent and charismatic to appear in Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century.-Biography:Luigi Ludovico Marchesi was born in Milan...
, Crescentini on stage; she has never had the chance of hearing them with the piano; still, the melomanes that heard them say she sounds like a pupil of theirs. As for singing, she is indebted to nobody but Mrs. Grassini, with whom she sang during a season in Brescia"
Main roles created
The list below although not exhaustive is representative of Grassini's Italian career.| role | opera | genre | composer | theatre | première’s date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polissena | Pirro | opera seria Opera seria Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770... -pasticcio Pasticcio In music, a pasticcio or pastiche is an opera or other musical work composed of works by different composers who may or may not have been working together, or an adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic.-Etymology:The term is first attested in the... (dramma per musica, 2nd version) |
Francesco Gardi, Francesco Bianchi Francesco Bianchi (musician) Giuseppe Francesco Bianchi was an Italian opera composer. Born at Cremona, Lombardy, he studied with Pasquale Cafaro and Niccolò Jommelli, and worked mainly in London, Paris and in all the major Italian operatic scenes, Venice, Naples, Rome, Milan, Turin, Florence.He wrote at least 78 operas of... , Sebastiano Nasolini and Nicola Antonio Zingarelli, |
Venice, Teatro (Venier) San Benedetto Teatro San Benedetto The Teatro San Benedetto was a theatre in Venice, particularly prominent in the operatic life of the city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It saw the premieres of over 140 operas, including Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, and was the theatre of choice for the presentation of opera seria until... |
8 May 1793 |
| Giulietta | Giulietta e Romeo | tragedia per musica (opera seria) | Nicola Antonio Zingarelli | Milan, Teatro alla Scala | 30 January 1796 |
| Issipile | L'Issipile | dramma per musica Dramma per musica Dramma per musica is a term which was used by dramatists in Italy and elsewhere between the late-17th and mid-19th centuries... (opera seria) |
Gaetano Marinelli | Venice, Teatro alla Fenice | 12 November 1796 |
| Orazia | Gli Orazi e i Curiazi | tragedia per musica (1st version) | Domenico Cimarosa | Venice, Teatro alla Fenice | 26 December 1796 |
| Calipso | Telemaco nell'isola di Calipso | dramma per musica | Giovanni Simone Mayr | Venice, Teatro Sant'Angelo | 16 January 1797 |
| Artemisia | Artemisia regina di Caria | dramma serio per musica | Domenico Cimarosa | Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo | 12 June 1797 |
| Consalvo di Cordova | opera seria | Giuseppe Maria Curcio (Curci) | Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo | 13 August 1797 | |
| Alceste | Alceste | tragedia per musica | Marcos Antônio Portugal | Venice, Teatro alla Fenice | 26 December 1798 |
| mother | Chant national du 14 juillet 1800 | operatic-patriotic hymn-scene | Étienne-Nicolas Méhul | Paris, Hôtel des Invalides (Temple de Mars) | 14 July 1800 |
| Venere | Pimmalione | dramma lirico | Luigi Cherubini | Paris, Théâtre des Tuileries | 30 November 1809 |
Sources
- Max Gallo, Napoléon, Paris, Edition Robert Laffont, 1997, ISBN 2-221-09796-3 (quoted from the Italian translation, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Biblioteca Storica del quotidiano Il Giornale)
- André Gavoty, La Grassini, Paris, 1947
- Rodolfo CellettiRodolfo CellettiRodolfo Celletti was an Italian musicologist, critic, voice teacher, and novelist. Considered one of the leading scholars of the operatic voice and the history of operatic performance, he published many books and articles on the subject as well as several novels.-Biography:Rodolfo Celletti was...
, Storia del belcanto, Discanto Edizioni, Fiesole, 1983 - Salvatore Caruselli (ed), Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica, vol 4, Longanesi &C. Periodici S.p.A., Roma
- Sadie,Stanley (ed), The new Grove Dictionary of Opera, Oxford University Press, 1992, vol 4, ad nomen
- Giovanni Morelli, “«E voi pupille tenere», uno sguardo furtivo, errante, agli «Orazi» di Domenico Cimarosa e altri”, essay included in Teatro dell’OperaTeatro dell'Opera di RomaThe Teatro dell'Opera di Roma is an opera house in Rome, Italy. Originally opened in November 1880 as the 2,212 seat Costanzi Theatre, it has undergone several changes of name as well modifications and improvements...
’s Programme for the performances of Gli Orazi e i Curiazi, Rome, 1989. - Stendhal, Vie de Rossini (quoted from the Italian translation: Vita di Rossini, Passigli Editori, ISBN 36800130)
- This article is a substantial translation from Giuseppina Grassini in the Italian Wikipedia.