Scan 138
The New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians 5 Ed. 2nd, 1904
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1Cuzzoni sang in Hasse's Ezio at Naples and in three operas, including Hasse's Artaserse, at Venice (where Faustina was engaged at a different theatre). She was in two operas at Florence in the Carnival season of 1731–2, and in the latter year sang for the last time at Venice, in Hasse's Euristeo. She appeared at Genoa in the 1733 and 1734 Carnival seasons. It is not surprising that when the Opera of the Nobility planned their opposition to Handel early in 1733 one of the first singers they approached was Cuzzoni, but she did not arrive until April 1734, when she joined the cast of Porpora's Arianna in Nasso. Between then and summer 1736 she sang in four more operas by Porpora (Enea nel Lazio, Polifemo, Ifigenia in Aulide and Mutride), Hasse's Artaserse arranged by Farinelli's brother Riccardo Broschi, Handel's Ottone (her old part of Teofane, but under Nobility management), Sandoni's Issipile, Veracini's Adriano in Siria, the pasticcio Orfeo and F Campi's Onorio, as well as at occasional concerts. Her last new part was Venus in Porpora's wedding serenata La festa d'Imeneo in May 1736. She seems to have roused less enthusiasm on this visit, perhaps because much of the music was inferior.
3Cuzzoni sang in Leo's Olimpiade and Caldara's Ormusda at Florence in 1737–8. In 1739 she was at Vienna, in September 1740 a member of Angelo Mingotti's opera company at Hamburg, where she also gave concerts. She sang in concerts at Amsterdam in February–April 1742 with the Wolfenbüttel Kapellmeister Giovanni Verocai, she and Sandoni had now separated. She is next heard of at Stuttgart, where she was engaged as chamber singer to the court on 28 December 1745 at a salary of 1500 gulden. She remained there for three years, performing at concerts and chapel services, but absconded to Bologna in autumn 1748 leaving many debts (her extravagance and improvidence had been notorious as early as 1723). Her offer to return at more than double the salary was curtly refused. In 1750 she revisited London and gave a benefit concert at Hickford's Room on 18 May. According to Horace Walpole she was arrested for debts of £30 and bailed out by the Prince of Wales. She sang twice with Guadagni the following year, at the annual Musicians Fund benefit at the King's on 16 April and for her own benefit at Hickford's on 23 May. The latter appearance, she informed the public in a letter to the press, 'shall be the last I will ever trouble them with, and is made solely to pay my Creditors'. Her programmes included the love-duet from Giulio Cesare, three songs from Ottone (including 'Falsa imagine') and 'Return, O God of Hosts' from Samson. It was a pathetic farewell. Burney says that since 'she was grown old, poor, and almost deprived of voice, by age and infirmities, there was but little company' and she returned to the Continent 'more miserable than she came'. 'A very good judge' assured him however that in private 'fine remains of her former grace and sweetness in singing Handel's most celebrated songs … were still discoverable'. She went to the Netherlands, where she was again imprisoned for debt, the prison governor allowed her to discharge it by releasing her under guard for occasional concerts. (This may possibly refer to her 1742 visit.) She spent her last years in Bologna, supporting herself, it is said, by making buttons. She died in obscurity and extreme poverty.
5Cuzzoni in her prime was by universal consent a superb artist. Burney expressed the views of various writers, including Tosi, Quantz and particularly Mancini (Pensieri riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato, 1774).
7It was difficult for the hearer to determine whether she most excelled in slow or rapid airs. A native warble enabled her to execute divisions with such facility as to conceal every appearance of difficulty, and so grateful and touching was the natural tone of her voice, that she rendered pathetic whatever she sung, in which she had leisure to unfold its whole volume. The art of conducting, sustaining, increasing, and diminishing her tones by minute degrees, acquired her, among professors, the title of complete mistress of her art. In a cantabile air, though the notes she added were few she never lost a favourable opportunity of enriching the cantilena with all the refinements and embellishments of the time. Her shake was perfect, she had a creative fancy, and the power of occasionally accelerating and retarding the measure in the most artificial and able manner, by what the Italians call tempo rubato. Her high notes were unrivalled in clearness and sweetness, and her intonations were so just and fixed, that it seemed as if it was not in her power to sing out of tune.
9Tosi praised her 'delightful soothing Cantabile', and contrasted her pre-eminence in 'Pathetick' with Faustina's dramatic fire in 'Allegro'. Quantz, who heard her often in 1727, said that 'her style of singing was innocent and affecting', and her graces 'took possession of the soul of every auditor, by her tender and touching expression'. She could move an audience to tears in such simple arias as 'Falsa imagine' and Rodelinda's 'Ho perduto il caro sposo'. A cruder tribute to her powers was the cry from the gallery while she sang 'Sen vola' in Admeto 'Damn her! she has got a nest of nightingales in her belly'. She was probably at her best on her first visit to London, and the wonderful series of parts Handel wrote for her, especially Cleopatra, Astoria, Rodelinda and Antigona, seems perfectly calculated to bring out the qualities mentioned above. They call for a fluid use of the whole compass from c' to b'' (Quantz said she sang up to c''') and offer repeated openings for her famous trill. The tessitura is about a tone higher than Faustina's. Cuzzoni was neither a great actress nor a beautiful woman, her magnetism was purely vocal. Horace Walpole, with reference to Rodelinda (one of her most popular parts), said
11she was short and squat, with a doughy cross face, but fine expression was not a good actress, dressed ill, and was silly and fantastical. And yet on her appearing in this opera, in a brown silk gown, trimmed with silver, with the vulgarity and indecency of which all the old ladies were much scandalised, the young adopted it as a fashion, so universally, that it seemed a national uniform for youth and beauty.
13The best likeness of Cuzzoni is a print after Seeman, reproduced in Hawkins's History. She appears in many caricatures, including two operatic scenes engraved by Vanderbank (1723, see BIRNBAUM, GIAFFANO) and Gioupy (1729) and original drawings by A. M. Zanetti (two in the Cini collection, I-Vgc) and Marco Ricci (two at Windsor Castle, one of which is reproduced here).
15WINTON DLAN
17Cvetko, Dragotin (b Vučja Vas, Ljutomer, 19 Sept 1911). Yugoslav musicologist. He studied at Ljubljana Conservatory and at the University of Ljubljana, where he received the PhD in music education in 1938. He then continued his studies at the master school of the Prague Conservatory. He taught at the Ljubljana Academy from 1938 to 1943 and from 1945 to 1962. In 1962 he founded the department of musicology at the University of Ljubljana, where he became professor; from 1970 to 1972 he served as the dean of the faculty of arts there. He is a member of the Slovene and Serbian Academies of Arts and Sciences, vice-president of the IMS and editor of Muzikološki zbornik. He was awarded the Herder Prize in 1972.
19Cvetko was initially interested in music education,
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