Margherita Durastanti was an Italian singer of the 18th century. Vocally, she is best described as a 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...

, though later in her career her tessitura

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...

 descended to that of a 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...

. First heard of professionally in Mantua in 1700-01, she later appeared in Bologna and Reggio Emilia (1710), Milan and Reggio (1713) and Florence (1715). Today she is particularly remembered for her association with the composer 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...

: indeed she enjoyed a longer personal association with the composer than any other musician.

As well as performing many of his early Italian solo cantatas, Durastanti's first roles for Handel included Mary Magdalene in his oratorio La Resurrezione

La Resurrezione

La resurrezione is a sacred oratorio by George Frideric Handel, set to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece . Capece was court poet to Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, who was living in exile in Rome. It was first performed on the Easter Sunday of 1708 at Rome, with the backing of the Marchese...

(1709) and the title role in Agrippina

Agrippina (opera)

Agrippina is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel, from a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the Venice Carnevale season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of...

later in the same year, in her capacity as prima donna of the S Giovanni Grisostomo Theatre in Venice, where she sang from 1709 to 1712. After singing at Parma, Florence, Naples (where she appeared in operas by Scarlatti), and, in 1719, Dresden, she came to London in 1720. News of her imminent arrival evinced the following unflattering comment from the librettist Rolli

Paolo Antonio Rolli

Paolo Antonio Rolli was an Italian librettist and poet.He was born in Rome, Italy and like Metastasio was trained by Gian Vincenzo Gravina. He worked in London from 1715 to 1744 where he became Italian tutor to the prince of Wales and the Royal Princesses...

: However, she received a strong recommendation from Steffan Benedetto Pallavicini, court poet at Dresden:
Nonetheless, she was offered her contract in Handel's Royal Academy company rather late in the day, so was probably not his first choice as a member of it. The roles Handel wrote for her during the next five years demonstrate her considerable abilities as a musician and actress, displaying a wide range of characters, both male and female, and an ability to cope with wide dissonant leaps in vocal lines and other difficulties, such as chromaticism and dramatic pauses.

First period in England

Though engaged as the first prima donna in the new company, she in effect began as primo uomo ("first man"), creating the name-part in Radamisto in April 1720. She was gradually demoted as more vocally gifted singers arrived, though even her lower-status roles, such as that of Sesto in Giulio Cesare (1724) made considerable vocal and theatrical demands. In 1721 she gave birth to a girl, and King George I

George I of Great Britain

George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 until his death, and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698....

 and the Princess Royal were among the child's godparents; in the autumn of that year she sang in Germany, and then in Italy during the spring of 1722. She returned to London in October 1722, but found herself superseded as "first woman" by the new sensation Francesca Cuzzoni

Francesca Cuzzoni

Francesca Cuzzoni was an Italian operatic soprano of the Baroque era.-Early career:Cuzzoni was born in Parma. Her father, Angelo, was a professional violinist, and her singing teacher was Francesco Lanzi. She made her debut in her home city in 1714, singing in La virtù coronata, o Il Fernando by...

. Clearly not particularly disconcerted by this turn of events, she remained in Handel's company for a further two seasons. Her final performance for him was a revival of Ariosti's Coriolano (March 1724), given for her benefit. In it she sang an English cantata to a text by Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 containing the lines "But let old charmers yield to new; /Happy soil, adieu, adieu!".

Second period in England

Handel brought Durastanti back to England for his 1733-34 season, when she sang in revivals of Ottone

Ottone

Ottone, re di Germania is an opera by George Frideric Handel, to an Italian–language libretto adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym from the libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino for Antonio Lotti's opera Teofane. It was the first new opera written for the Royal Academy of Music 's fourth season...

and Il pastor fido

Il pastor fido

Il pastor fido is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was set to a libretto by Giacomo Rossi based on the famed and widely familiar pastoral poem of the same name by Giovanni Battista Guarini.-Performance history:...

, as well as several 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...

s. By this time she was probably in her fifties, and had been singing professionally for over thirty years. It is testimony to her enduring abilities that an aristocratic opera-lover of the time, Lady Bristol, was moved to comment:

Although there is little surviving contemporary opinion of Durastanti's singing, Charles Burney

Charles Burney

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

 wrote insightfully, though at second hand, of her performance in the first revival of Handel's Floridante

Floridante

Floridante is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was by Paolo Antonio Rolli after Francesco Silvani's libretto for Marc'Antonio Ziani dramma per musica La costanza in trionfo of 1696....

in 1722: