Singers
Chronology of Singers' Performaces
Corrado Giaquinto, Portrait of Carlo Broschi called Farinelli, c. 1755, oil on canvas. Bologna, Museo internazionale e Biblioteca della musica
contact person: Alfredo Vitolo
Information about the performances described in the Corago Chronology was obtained from direct consultation of the librettos (in original or reproduction). For the sources that could not be consulted directly, recourse was usually made to repertories and catalogs, in print and online, starting with I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800, edited by Claudio Sartori, Cuneo, Bertola & Locatelli, 1990-1994 (on this repertory a verification of the acquired data is in progress, conducted in particular on the index of singers: as of today the verification is complete for the letters A-B), and from the Italian national catalog SBN.
In the librettos, however, the singers' names are not infrequently given in different forms and are sometimes incomplete or absent. A few examples: maiden and married names (Bordoni/Hasse Faustina); masculine proper names for women and vice versa (Mrs. Raffaele De Anna); mere spelling errors (Fortaglini/Tartaglini Rosa; Alleizzati/Albizzati Marietta); local linguistic phenomena (Benazzi/Benassi, Giuliani/Zuliani, Rinaud/Rinò); dialectal variants (Fiorillo/Sciorillo Giuseppe); pseudonyms (Broschi/Farinelli). In these cases, the name given in the librettos does not allow to correctly identify the singer indicated: other sources, primary or secondary, had to be consulted.
In order to ascertain the identity of the singers mentioned in the librettos and to supplement the information gaps in the performances in the Chronology, an initial Bibliography was identified, with a focus on studies presenting information from primary sources other than the librettos (scores, playbills, notices, administrative documents, letters, etc.). The work was initially conducted on a few places that usually report incomplete or missing information on the performers in the librettos (e.g. London, Naples, Paris, Vienna, Dresden).
The systematic consultation of the Indice dei Teatrali Spettacoli (ITS), which covers the years from 1764 to 1823, is currently in progress: so far, the years up to 1776/77 have been consulted.
In particularly complex cases of identity identification, cross-checks are made between the performers' places of activity and the temporal and geographical coordinates of the performances by exploiting the large amount of information contained in Corago.
Finally, in reviewing and supplementing the descriptive data on the singers, the role qualifications (prima donna, prima uomo, primo buffo, etc.) and all other historical information found in the sources consulted (affiliations, patronage, indications of origin, family relationships, vocal role, etc.) are given in full.