Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London

Regina Mingotti was the first female impresario to run London’s opera house. Born in Naples in 1722, she was the daughter of an Austrian diplomat, and had worked at Dresden under Hasse from 1747. Mingotti left Germany in 1752, and travelled to Madrid to sing at the Spanish court, where the opera was directed by the great castrato, Farinelli. It is not known quite how Francesco Vanneschi, the opera promoter, came to hire Mingotti, but in 1754 (travelling to England via Paris), she was announced as being engaged for the opera in London ‘having been admired at Naples and other parts of Italy, by all the Connoisseurs, as much for the elegance of her voice as that of her features’. Michael Burden offers the first considered survey of Mingotti’s London years, including material on Mingotti’s publication activities, and the identification of the characters in the key satirical print ‘The Idol’.

Burden makes a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of eighteenth-century singers’ careers and status, and discusses the management, the finance, the choice of repertory, and the pasticcio practice at The King’s Theatre, Haymarket during the middle of the eighteenth century. Burden also argues that Mingotti’s years with Farinelli influenced her understanding of drama, fed her appreciation of Metastasio, and were partly responsible for London labelling her a ‘female Garrick’. The book includes the important publication of the complete texts of both of Mingotti’s Appeals to the Publick, accounts of the squabble between Mingotti and Vanneschi, which shed light on the role a singer could play in the replacement of arias. ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION MONOGRAPHS

General Editor: Simon P. Keefe

This series is supported by funds made available to the Royal Musical Association from the estate of Thurston Dart, former King Edward Professor of Music at the University of London. The editorial board is the Publications Committee of the Association.

Recent monographs in the series (for a full list, see the end of this book):

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Brahms Beyond Mastery: His Sarabande and Gavotte, and its Recompositions Robert Pascall

MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164‒167 Anthony M. Cummings

Bartók and the Grotesque: Studies in Modernity, the Body and Contradiction in Music Julie Brown

Sacred Repertories in Paris under Louis XIII: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Vma ms rés. 571 Peter Bennett ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION MONOGRAPHS 22

Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London

MICHAEL BURDEN First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2013 Michael Burden

Michael Burden has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Burden, Michael, 1960- Regina Mingotti : diva and impresario at the King’s Theatre, London / by Michael Burden. pages cm. -- (Royal musical association monographs) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6936-4 (hardcover) 1. Opera--England--London--18th century. 2. Mingotti, Regina, 1722-1808. 3. Impresarios--England--London. 4. Sopranos--England--London. 5. King’s Theatre (London, England) I. Title. ML1731.3.B87 2013 782.1092--dc23 2013013626

ISBN 9780754669364 (hbk) Regina Mingotti, by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779). Charles Burney remarked of this rococo pastel that if the likeness was an accurate one, ‘she was then nearer a beauty, than it is now easy to imagine her ever to have been’. The music she holds suggests that she also had some skill in composition. For Hermione Contents

List of Illustrations ix Foreword xi Acknowledgements xiii Bibliographical Note and Abbreviations xv

Introduction: ‘The Mingotti’ – a Diva in the Making 1

1 London Opera: Buildings, Impresarios, Repertories, Finances 9

2 Mingotti in London, 1754–57 23

3 London Opera between 1757 and 1763 83

4 Mingotti Redux, 1763–64 97

Appendices

1 Operas Performed in the Seasons in which Mingotti Sang 119

2 Arias Sung in London by Mingotti 125

3 John Lockman: A faithful narrative of the late pretended gunpowder plot 141

4 Mingotti’s Two Appeals to the Public 157

Select Bibliography 169 Index 173

List of Illustrations

Frontispiece: Regina Mingotti. Anton Mengs, ‘Regina Mingotti’. Pastel, c. 1748. Städtische Galerie – Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.

Illustration I.1 The Mingotti troupe’s theatre on the Zwinger. Source: Johann Christoph Jünger, Brand des ehem: Opernhauses im Zwinger am 29. Jan. 1748. Städtische Galerie – Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. SLUB Dresden/Deutsche Fotothek.

Illustration I.2 Farinelli in Madrid, Farinelli, Descripción del Stado actual del Real Theatro, 1758, Real Biblioteca II/1412, fol. 140r, Madrid, © Patrimonio Nacional.

Illustration 1.1 The King’s Theatre in Mingotti’s time. Engraved for Gabriel Dumont, Parallèle de Plans des Plus Belles Salles de Spectacles d’Italie et de France. Reproduced with the permission of the Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

Illustration 2.1 Thomas Gainsborough, Felice Giardini, oil on canvas, early 1760s, Knole, Kent.

Illustration 2.2 [Mr Hitchin], A Musical Lady [thought to be Giulia Frasi], mezzotint, Harvard Theatre Collection.

Illustration 2.3 ‘December hath XXXI Days’ from A new register commonly called Jenny’s Whim … (London: S. Crowder and H. Woodgate, [1756]).

Illustration 2.4 Anon., The Idol, engraving, published by Darby and Edwards, 8 October 1756, © The Trustees of the British Museum, Satires 3533.

Illustration 2.5 William Hogarth, The Lady’s Last Stake, oil on canvas, 1758, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA, © Photo SCALA, Florence.

Illustration 2.6 Facsimile of Mingotti’s opera Euristeo, 1757, the Huntington Library, San Marino, La. 135, f. 8r.

Illustration 2.7 Vanneschi’s and Mingotti’s competing advertisements from the Public Advertiser, 28 May 1757.

Illustration 2.8 Mingotti’s advertisement from the Public Advertiser, 11 December 1755. Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London

Illustration 4.1 ‘Se tutti i mali miei’ from FOUR SONGS in the OPERA call’d IL DEMOFONTE [sic] sung by Sigra Mingotti, GB-Lbl G.201.(1*.).

Illustration 4.2 ‘Vocal divisions and refinements in dramatic music from 1740 to 1755’, Charles Burney, A General History of Music, iv (London: for the Author, 1789), 462, the Huntington Library, San Marino, 13555.

x Foreword

Much may be said about the soprano, Regina Mingotti, and much remains to be discovered, for there are periods in her life that merit greater scrutiny from scholars than they currently enjoy. The aim of this short study is to piece together the story of her London years, including her interactions with those she met, worked with, promoted her interests, and who attempted, in the operatic sense, to ‘manage’ her. It includes commentary on the seasons in which she sang, and some discussion of the operas themselves. It has largely (and intentionally) avoided tying the commentary on her vocal prowess to the surviving arias she is credited with singing. As will become apparent, not only have all the works she sang come down to us in fragmentary form, but there is no evidence that the published form of the music is that in which she sang it, and or, indeed, that she actually sang the music attributed to her.

Acknowledgements

As always, my greatest debts are to libraries, primarily the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the British Library, London, and the (now defunct) Theatre Museum Library, Covent Garden; I have also had great assistance from the Barr-Smith Library at the University of Adelaide, the Library of Congress, Washington, the Harvard Theatre Collection (a department of the Houghton Library at Harvard) and the library of New College, Oxford. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, provided me with the time, space and community to enable me to write the greater part of the following text. My work over the last few years has been assisted by grants, which enabled me to complete research on a number of aspects of staging opera in London: one through an Andrew Mellon Fellowship to the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; another from Eugene Ludwig, through the Ludwig Family Charitable Trust; and lastly, a Bader Visiting Fellowship to the Harvard Theatre Collection. Further grants from the University of Oxford’s Astor Travel Fund and the Faculty of Music supported research visits to the United States. Some of the material in this volume has been used in conference papers, most importantly at the annual meetings of the British and American Societies for Eighteenth-century Studies, and at the Society for Theatre Research conference at the Theatre Royal in Richmond, Yorkshire: ‘The Georgian Playhouse and its Continental Counterparts, 1750–1850’. I owe the following colleagues and friends specific debts of various kinds: Donald Burrows, Christopher Chowrimootoo, Maggie Davies, the late Judy Egerton, Mark Everist, the late Anthony Hicks, Jonathan Hicks, Cheryl Hoskin, Robert D. Hume, Jacqui Julier, Stefan Knapik, Hermione Lee, Judith Milhous, Frans and Julie Muller, Don Neville, Andrew Pinnock, Roger Savage, Jennifer Thorp, Peter Ward-Jones and Jed Wentz.

Bibliographical Note and Abbreviations

Bibliographical Note As will become apparent, hard information on Mingotti’s years in London is difficult to come by, and a word should be said of three sources on which the text in this volume draws frequently. The first source consists of Mingotti’s own twoAppeals to the Public. Published early in 1756, both pamphlets are clear and concise, and dripping with vitriol. Aimed at the impresario Francesco Vanneschi, they made public an acrimonious and tortured relationship between impresario and singer. Mingotti’s narrative does present an obvious problem, for, not surprisingly, it does not document the season, but justifies her position in a professional relationship that became increasingly difficult for both parties. But there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the numerous details of opera house management that her complaints reveal. The texts do, initially, arouse suspicions that Mingotti did not herself compose them, for it seems unlikely that a visiting Italian singer could develop the proficiency in English the pamphlets exhibit, but their fluency may be explained by Mingotti’s reputed linguistic skills; at the very least, their immediacy suggests that they must have been dictated, perhaps to the printer. The second source is Charles Burney’s monumental General History of Music, which bestrides eighteenth-century English music history like a Colossus. His judgement and commentary has been the subject of much consideration – see, for example, Kerry S. Grant, Dr Burney as Critic and Historian of Music (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983) – and nothing more is due from me here. In collecting material for the General History, Burney travelled through Europe, meeting with Mingotti in Munich, and in the course of the visit, she recounted to him a biography of her early years, which duly appeared in Burney’s 1773 The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces. There is a clear feeling of sympathy between the two, with much admiration on Burney’s side for Mingotti’s intelligence and performing skills. She appears to have discussed her years at the King’s Theatre with him, for his account of them in the General History has more details and immediacy than, for example, his account of the subsequent years under Colomba Mattei. It is also more accurate: his material on Mingotti is largely corroborated elsewhere, but as Chapter 4 shows, his claims for Colomba’s years at the theatre are speculative, and his text relies more on a consideration of surviving sources. The third major source has been the correspondence of Horace Walpole, one of the great gossips of the age. His text is immediate, Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London witty and full of minutiae, exposing his prejudices and foibles at every turn. For the most part, his text as it relates to Vanneschi and Mingotti is supported by other sources, and where possible, I have preferred Walpole’s sharply observed commentary to more prosaic accounts.

Bibliographical Abbreviations

BDA Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other stage personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1973–93).

Cited by volume number, date and page number. Burden Michael Burden, ‘Metastasio on the London stage, 1728 to 1840: a catalogue’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, xxxix (2007). Burney, Charles Burney, A General History of Music, 4 vols (London: General History for the author, 1776–89).

Cited by volume number, date, and page number. Burney, Charles Burney, Memoirs of the life and writings of the Abate Memoirs Metastasio. In which are incorporated, translations of his principal letters, 3 vols (London: G., G. and J. Robinson, 1796). Burrows and Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill, Music and Theatre Dunhill in Handel’s World; the family papers of James Harris 1732–1780 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Cited by correspondent and page number. GROVE vi/2 Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols (London: Macmillan, 2/2001). GDO Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4 vols (London: Macmillan, 1992). LS The London Stage 1660–1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press): iii (1962), Arthur H. Scouten, ed.; iv (1972), George Winchester Stone, Jr., ed.

Cited by date, followed by part and volume number, and page number. Mingotti, Regina Mingotti, An Appeal to the Public (London: for the An Appeal authoress, [1756]). Mingotti, Regina Mingotti, A Second Appeal to the Public (London: for A Second Appeal Regina Mingotti, [1756]).

xvi Bibliographical Note and Abbreviations

Walpole Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press).

Cited by correspondent, followed by volume number and page number. ix (1941), with George Montagu. i: W. S. Lewis and Ralph S. Brown, Jr., eds. xvii (1954), with Sir Horace Mann. i: W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith and George L. Lam, eds. xviii (1954), with Sir Horace Mann. ii: W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith and George L. Lam, eds. xx (1960), with Sir Horace Mann. iv: W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith and George L. Lam, eds. xx (1960), with Sir Horace Mann. v: W. S. Lewis, Warren Hunting Smith and George L. Lam, eds. xxxv (1973), with John Chute, Richard Bentley, The Earl of Strafford, Sir William Hamilton, The Earl and Countess of Harcourt, George Hardinge. W. S. Lewis, A. Dayle Wallace and Robert A. Smith, eds., with the assistance of Edwine M. Martz. xxxvii (1974), with Henry Seymour, Lady Ailesbury, Lord and Lady Hertford, Lord Beauchamp, Henrietta Seymour Conway. i: W. S. Lewis, Lars E. Troide, Edwine M. Martz and Robert A. Smith, eds. xxxviii (1974), with Henry Seymour, Lady Ailesbury, Lord and Lady Hertford, Lord Beauchamp, Henrietta Seymour Conway. ii: W. S. Lewis, Lars E. Troide, Edwine M. Martz, and Robert A. Smith, eds.

xvii

Introduction: ‘The Mingotti’ – a Diva in the Making

The opera star Regina Mingotti was as high-handed a personality as she was an amazing soprano. She was a linguist, reputedly fluent in French, Italian and German, and versed in Latin, Spanish and English. In London, she not only sang, but self-published her own songs outside the theatre copyists’ cartel revolving around the powerful publisher, John Walsh. She quarrelled publicly with her employer, the impresario Francesco Vanneschi, and abused him shamelessly and eloquently in printed pamphlets, which she also self-published and sold from the pamphlet shops near her lodgings in Pall Mall. She plotted the takeover of Vanneschi’s enterprise at the King’s Theatre, and succeeded (whether deliberately or as a side product) to the extent of sending him, possibly bankrupt but at least financially embarrassed, to the Fleet Prison. Mingotti became London’s first operatic singer-manager, and the first woman to manage her own opera season there. English commentators paid her the same honour they were later to accord to such singers as Elizabeth Billington and Gertrud Mara, in coupling her surname with the article: she was known for many years as ‘The Mingotti’, which, in a culture of celebrity, indicated that her standing, born of notoriety, equalled (or outweighed) her position as a singer.1 Her formidable nature on show in her years in London is clear from Burney’s comments on the pastel of her by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79) from her early years in Dresden (frontispiece): In the cabinet of crayon paintings … [there is a portrait], by Mengs of Mingotti, when young, with a music paper in her hand; and if the resemblance was exact, she was then nearer a beauty, than it is now easy to imagine her ever to have been; she is here painted in youth, plumpness, and with a very expressive countenance.2 The ‘beauty’ referred to by Burney does, however, seem to be almost entirely the product of art: the carefully chosen décolleté dress, the pearl decorations and the flowers at the cleavage. The rolled-up music would normally suggest that the subject professed some skill in composition, which does seem likely during these early years in Dresden. Her

1 The formulation in London appears to have begun with singers, Mingotti being one of the first. Emily Anderson has put the case for its later adoption by actresses such as Mrs Siddons, although with less notoriety and more seriousness than in the opera world (‘Celebrity as effacement; Mary Robinson’sPerdita ’, paper given at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-century Studies, Albuquerque, 17–20 March 2010). 2 Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United provinces. Or, the journal of a tour through those countries, undertaken to collect materials for a general history of music (London; T. Becket, J. Robson and G. Robinson, 1773), ii, 41. Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London

‘expressive countenance’ is unmistakably the formidable one seen under the helmet of her Attilio Regolo costume of 1750, and the boldness of her features suggests one of the reasons for her success in playing breeches parts. What was Mingotti’s early biography? Like many other musicians of the time, little of any worth can be substantiated, and in Mingotti’s case, we have to rely on Charles Burney for much of the detail about her early life,3 detail which has constantly been repeated by authors of all sorts, and which appears to be the source for the profile published in London in The Lady’s Magazine in 1774.4 She was born in Naples on 16 February 1722, and made her court opera début on 25 May 1747 at Dresden, in a setting of Apostolo Zeno’s Merope by Paulo Scalabrini (1713–1806). Between these two events lay years of struggle, and a sense of a patch-and-mend response to events as she was buffeted by family circumstances. Regina’s father was an Austrian army officer of German origin named Valentini, who, at the time of her birth, was stationed in Naples. Following his new posting, the family moved to Gratz in Silesia when Regina was a year old, only for him to die shortly afterwards. She then came under the care of her uncle, who placed her in an Ursuline convent, but his death when Regina was fourteen removed the financial stability that allowed her to study there, and she returned home to her mother and two sisters. From what we know of her character, it is doubtful that these domestic conditions suited her, and it comes as no surprise to find that soon after, she was singing in an opera troupe managed by the impresario Pietro Mingotti (c. 1702–59). Pietro and his brother Angelo (c. 1700 to after 1767) were both impresarios active in Austria, Germany and, in later years, Denmark. The brothers ran separate companies that performed, sometimes together, with mixed success. Pietro’s company had the more impressive engagements: among his grander performances was that at the court in Frankfurt, where Maria Theresa of Austria’s husband, Francis of Lotharingen (whom she had married in 1736), was crowned Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Pietro’s financial situation was eventually to become the more precarious, however, and in 1755 he was finally forced to seek dissolution of his connection with the court in Copenhagen. His property seized and sold to assist in paying his many debts, and little is known of his career after this date. Regina had met Pietro some time in the early 1740s. His troupe held a ten-year concession to perform in Graz, and it seems likely that they encountered one another when the company was in town. Regina joined the troupe in 1743 – at least, she is recorded singing with them under her maiden name of Valentini in Hamburg that year5 – and they

3 Ibid., i, 150–60. 4 The Lady’s Magazine, xlv (January 1774); advertised in the London Chronicle, 29 January to 11 February 1774. 5 Erich H. Müller, Die Mingottischen Operanunternehmungen 1732–1756 (Dresden: [NP], 1915), lxvii.

2 Introduction: ‘The Mingotti’ – a Diva in the Making

Illustration I.1 The Mingotti Troupe’s theatre on the Zwinger. A fantastical night painting, it conveys both the excitement and danger of such crowded outdoor performances. were married in 1746. That year the company received a concession to perform in Dresden, where the troupe had its own wooden theatre on the Zwinger, in the large inner courtyard, which at this time still had one side open to the river, and was used for festivities of all kinds (Illustration I.1). The granting of the concession was particularly timely for Pietro’s troupe, for in the following year, 1747, Maria Antonia Walpurgis, the daughter of Charles Albert of Bavaria, married the Prince Elector Frederick Christian, first by proxy on 13 June in Munich, and then in person on 20 June in Dresden. In fact, the event was a double wedding: Maria Anna of Saxony was also united with Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria. Dresden saw a month-long series of celebrations with a centerpiece staging of La Spartana generosa by the court’s Kapellmeister, Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783), with a cast that included the soprano Faustina Bordoni (1697–1781), the castrati Giovanni Carestini (c. 1704–60) and Porporino, Giovanni Bindi (fl. 1747), and the tenor Angelo Amorevoli (1716–98). Designed by Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena,6 the opera also contained ballets by the soon-to-be-great Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810). Mingotti’s company was able to capitalise on the celebrations, and provided in the open air theatre in the gardens

6 Galli-Bibiena (1695–1757) had arrived in Dresden that year from Bayreuth. His Dresden work would include rebuilding the Opernhaus am Zwinger, completed in 1750. GDO, ii, 332.

3 Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London of Schloss Pillnitz a staging of a much less glamorous opera, Gluck’s pasticcio festa teatrale, Le nozze d’Ercole e d’Ebe, in which Regina sang the leading role, the breeches part of Hercules.7 The exact circumstances of Mingotti’s appointment to the Dresden court are not known, but Maria Antonia’s arrival may have precipitated it. Much admired by, among others, Metastasio, Maria Antonia was musically very engaged, and was to become a considerable composer in her own right: her operas include Il trionfo della fedeltà and Talestri, regina delle Amazzoni. The famed Neapolitan composer and singer teacher Nicola Porpora (1686–1768) was engaged as her master. As it happens, he also became Mingotti’s teacher. Mingotti was presented at court for the first time as his protégée on 18 July 1747 in a performance of his opera buffa,Filandro . This three-act pastorale, based on Vincenzo Cassani’s libretto, L’inconstanza schernita, was performed (and probably written) for Maria Antonia’s birthday, and the presence of the princess at the performance may have played a part in the employment of Mingotti at the Court opera at a salary of 2,000 thalers. The court opera already had a singing star in Faustina Bordoni, known widely as Faustina, and a woman as much admired for her voice as she was notorious for her on-stage antics: she and fellow diva the great Francesca Cuzzoni came to blows in the London production of Handel’s Astianette on 6 June 1727.8 Further, Faustina was married to Kappellmeister Hasse: they had wed in June 1730 and were both summoned to the Saxon court in 1731. Faustina and Mingotti were clearly destined not to get on, and it seems wholly unlikely that Hasse would have appointed Mingotti to the court entirely at his own instigation. After Mingotti’s appointment, there was a short period of enforced calm before the inevitable storm. From May 1748 until early 1749, the court was in Warsaw, and Hasse, who was not obliged to follow, is recorded first in Bayreuth and then in Venice. He appears to have been back in Dresden by August 1749, when his Il natal di Giove was performed. Meanwhile, Mingotti was recorded by Sainsbury making her Neapolitan début as Aristea in Baldassare Galuppi’s L’Olimpiade (an opera first performed in Milan in 1747); she apparently ‘surprised the

7 See, among other accounts, that by Patricia Howard: Gluck, an Eighteenth-century Portrait in Letters and Documents (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 22. 8 See the contemporary anonymous parody account, The devil to pay at St. James’s: or, A full and true Account of a most horrid and bloody Battle between Madam Faustina and Madam Cuzzoni … (London: A. More, [1727]), and various modern accounts of this including George J. Buelow, ‘A lesson in operatic performance practice by Madame Faustina Bordoni’, in Edward H. Clinksdale and Claire Brook, A Musical Offering: essays in honour of Martin Bernstein (New York: Pendragon, [1977]), 79–96, and C. Steven Larue, Handel and His Singers: the Creation of the Royal Academy, 1720–1728 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 144–81.

4 Introduction: ‘The Mingotti’ – a Diva in the Making

Italians as much by the purity of her pronunciation as by her melodious voice, and expressive and natural manner of acting.’9 Hasse, Faustina and Mingotti all appear to have been back in Dresden by the beginning of the 1749–50 season, and thereafter, working relations between the three musicians deteriorated. One early dispute related to a point of staging in performing Hasse’s revision of his setting of Metastasio’sDemofoonte . Should Faustina, playing a princess, yield rank to Mingotti, whilst Faustina’s character was disguised as a handmaiden? Metastasio himself was asked to adjudicate, which he did: for dramatic authenticity, Faustina’s character must yield to Mingotti’s. Faustina’s reaction can be imagined. The situation came to a head with the staging of Hasse’s Adriano in Siria, due to be played for the Carnival in 1752. It had been intended that Mingotti succeed Faustina as prima donna of the company, but Hasse appears to have become the focus of rivalry between the two women, and took ill during this period with an attack of gout. This was probably a ‘political illness’ designed to avoid what was obviously an intolerable situation.10 The opera would not have been staged at all, had not Hasse’s place been taken by Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755). Mingotti and Faustina could not, obviously, co-exist in the same company, and Mingotti was let go (without pension) on 1 May 1752, leaving for Spain and for an appointment with the court opera in Madrid some time thereafter. The Madrid opera was at that time under the control of the celebrated castrato Farinelli, the stage name of Carlo Broschi (1705–82), a close friend (and possibly more) of Metastasio’s. Farinelli had been a servant of the Spanish court since 1737 when he was hired to sing the same three arias every night to a depressed Philip V, and in 1747 was put in charge of the theatres at Buen Retiro and Aranjuez11 (Illustration I.2). During this period, Farinelli received close guidance from Metastasio, both in the matter of adapting the poet’s opera librettos, and on how to stage them.12 In fact, Farinelli made constant demands on his gemello, demands to which Metastasio seems to have been more than willing to respond: Now this entertainment is finished, which lay on my mind, I shall think of the Licenza, or complimentary epilogue to Semiramis, and of the air which you wish to change. In the mean time, I inclose for you the scene, and the dresses of the

9 [John Sainsbury], A Dictionary of Musicians, from the earliest ages to the present time (London: Sainsbury and Co., 1824), 164. 10 Hasse had previously suffered a ‘political’ illness when the negotiations for his move to Dresden from Venice appeared stuck on an issue of salary. 11 This story is told in numerous places – see, for example, William Coxe, Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon, 1700 to 1788 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815), III, 89 – although the actual number of arias differs between three and nine. 12 Roger Savage, ‘Getting by with a little help from my twin: Farinelli with Metastasio at his right hand, 1747–1759’, British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies, xxviii/3 (2005), 387–409.

5 Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London entertainment, for which I give you notice, that there will be some rehearsals necessary for the Recitative, if you wish things to go as they ought.13 Written in March 1753, when Mingotti was singing with Farinelli, this letter contains a level of demand – extra complimentary verses, new aria texts, scenic and costume ideas, rehearsal suggestions – that demonstrates a rare engagement at every level with the drama and its presentation. The importance – at least for Metastasio – of the opera being interpreted as a dramatic whole was further made clear in his advice given to Hasse for the staging of Metastasio’s revised 1750 version of Attilio Regolo, in which Mingotti sung Publius. Writing to Hasse from Vienna, Metastasio commented that Publius was ‘the young lion that promises all the force of the fire, but is not yet furnished with tusks and claws; and it may easily be conjectured through his impetuosity, passion and the inexperience of youth, what he will be, when arrived at maturity’.14 His further advice was that such details of character should be carried into the composition and performance of recitative: ‘as his reflections consist of doubts and suspensions, they will afford an opportunity for extraneous modulation, and short ritornelli for the instruments’,15 and ‘it will be necessary, particularly in this scene, to avoid the inconvenience of making the singer wait for the chord; otherwise all the heat and energy of the speech will be chilled’.16 Both Dresden and Madrid were formative experiences for Mingotti. Through the musical and dramatic direction first of Hasse and then of Farinelli, she acquired direct lines to Metastasio, the master of the eighteenth-century libretto. Mingotti became a formidable performer, and she ‘repaid’ Metastasio by becoming a champion of the poet’s works. She later referred to Demofoonte as being ‘written by [her] Favourite Metastasio’, and when she protested against the performance in London of a new setting, she told impresario Vanneschi that ‘if he would think of exhibiting any of Metastasio’s Operas’ she would ‘pick out of my Collection such Songs [settings] as would do much better’. When the same impresario presented her with ‘the Manuscript of Ipermestra’, it was not ‘as Metastasio originally writ it, and as it is exhibited in Vienna and all other Places’, and he was ridiculed by her for his pains. Mingotti had played the title role in Hasse’s setting at the Hoftheater in Dresden in 1751, she knew the work well, and she announced that the opera he had presented her with was ‘curtailed and changed by himself in a most unskilful and absurd manner’.17 This contact with Metastasio was one of the factors that in Burney’s view, expressed much later in the century, made her one of only two female singers ‘who had studied

13 Burney, Memoirs, ii, 54. 14 Burney, Memoirs, i, 318–19. 15 Ibid., 324. 16 Ibid., 321. 17 Mingotti,Appeal , 2.

6 Introduction: ‘The Mingotti’ – a Diva in the Making

Illustration I.2 Farinelli (1705–1782) in Madrid. Mingotti sung for him at the Spanish court between 1750 and 1753. This drawing from his manual Descripción del Stado actual del Real Theatro, shows a figure (who is possibly Farinelli) at work in a theatre, presumably the one in which Mingotti worked during her years with the royal opera. stage effects as well as harmony, sufficiently to enlighten the author of the words she sung, as well as the composer of the music’.18 Why then, with such an established European career, did Mingotti come to London? Nothing concrete is known of her departure from the court in Madrid, but it was reported on 26 February that ‘Mingotti, the first Actress belonging to the Opera, who has a Salary of 7000 Piastres, refuses to play unless it be augmented to 10000’.19 Metastasio also remarked to Farinelli that:

18 Burney, Memoirs, i, 36. 19 Public Advertiser, 23 March 1754.

7 Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London

Signora Mingotti will many times in her life regret the banks of the Manzanare, which she now so unadvisedly abandons. I believe the sacred words nescitis quid petatis, are particularly applicable to this kind of people.20 The ‘sacred words’ are from Matthew 21:22 – ‘whatsoever you ask in prayer, you shall receive’– and suggest that the newspaper report could well have been true. Although the salary figures may not be correct – singers’ salaries were often the subject of inflation by report21 – it may well be that she left in high dudgeon after being refused a salary rise. But it may be that the refusal of such a rise may have foreshadowed later events; by 8 October that year, it was reported from Madrid that reform of the King’s household involved ‘cutting off Part of the Expense of the Opera, as also the Salaries of the Singers’, and being a woman of foresight, Mingotti may have decided to cut her losses.22 But Mingotti may have also wanted to escape, for, if Sainsbury is to be believed, her time in Madrid was bound by the court, and by its routines. He reported that Farinelli not only ‘restricted her singing to the court theatre’, but that he even forbade her ‘practising in a room which looked towards the street’.23 Whatever the truth of the matter, Metastasio’s letter does confirm that it was she who chose to depart Madrid, rather than Farinelli dispensing with her services. By 22 September 1754, she had either been formally engaged for, or was on her way to, London, for on that date an announcement from the Prince of Orange Coffee House read: SIGNORA MENGOTTI [sic], a famous Italian singer, is expected to play at the Hay-Market this winter. This lady has been admired at Naples and other parts of Italy, by all the Connoisseurs, as much for the elegance of her voice as that of her features.24 The Prince of Orange Coffee House had musical connections, and advertisements before and after 1755 give some feeling for the flavour of the establishment.25 Musicians even used it as a postal address, as in the case of ‘Henry Rash, french horn’ in the Universal Directory.26 That Mingotti’s arrival should have been announced via this particular coffee house is therefore entirely to be expected. But did the London opera world know what was about to hit it? Probably not.

20 Burney, Memoirs, ii, 73. 21 See, for example, Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘Construing and Mis- construing Farinelli in London’, British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies, xxxviii/3 (2005), 361–87. 22 London Evening Post, 2–4 November 1754. 23 [Sainsbury], A Dictionary of Musicians, 164. 24 Charles Mercury, Entertainer, No 4, 24 September 1754. 25 It is not clear just where the Prince of Orange Coffee House was – Lillywhite suggests that it moved during its operating period of 1702 to 1833: Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses: a reference book of coffee houses of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), 457. 26 [Anon.], The nobleman’s and gentleman’s guide to the masters and performers of the liberal and polite arts and sciences (London: J. Coote, 1763), 36.

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