Italian operatic soprano (c. 1815?1891)
Fanny Salvini-Donatelli
|
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Fanny_Salvini-Donatelli_La_Fenice_Portrait_%28colour%29.jpg/220px-Fanny_Salvini-Donatelli_La_Fenice_Portrait_%28colour%29.jpg) |
Born
| Francesca Lucchi
c.
1815
Florence
|
---|
Died
| 1891
Milan
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Occupation
| Operatic
soprano
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Fanny Salvini-Donatelli
(
c.
1815
– 1891) was an Italian operatic
soprano
. She is best known today for creating the role of Violetta in
Verdi
's opera,
La traviata
, but she was also an admired interpreter of the composer's other works as well as those by
Donizetti
.
Biography
[
edit
]
Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, whose real name was
Francesca Lucchi
,
was born in
Florence
to a prosperous family. Financial hardship following her father's death led her to a career as an actress.
In the early 1830s she became the second wife of the actor, Giuseppe Salvini, (and the stepmother of the much more famous actor
Tommaso Salvini
).
[a]
However, her marriage was an unhappy one, as was her relationship with her stepchildren. Following her desertion of the family in 1842, Giuseppe Salvini obtained a separation on the grounds of infidelity.
He died two years later. While married to Salvini, she studied singing and made her operatic debut in 1839 at the Teatro Apollo in
Venice
as Rosina in
Il barbiere di Siviglia
.
Premier poster for
La traviata
, Salvini-Donatelli as Violetta Valery
Theater am Karntnertor
where Salvini-Donatelli made her Vienna debut in 1843 as Abigaille in Verdi's
Nabucco
Salvini-Donatelli went on to a major career in Italy singing primarily at
La Fenice
and the
Teatro Regio di Parma
, where in 1850 a
sonnet
in her honour, written by the city's
epigramist
, Artaserse Folli, was distributed to the audience.
She also performed at
La Scala
, the
Teatro Regio di Torino
, the
Teatro Comunale di Bologna
, the
Teatro Grande di Trieste
and several other Italian theatres. Outside Italy, she sang in Paris,
Barcelona
,
Vienna
(where she made her debut in 1843 as Abigaille in
Nabucco
conducted by Verdi himself),
</ref> and London (where she made her debut in 1858 at the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
as Leonora in
Il trovatore
).
Although she is primarily remembered for creating the role of Violetta in
La traviata
, she created four other roles in now forgotten operas: Editta in
Giovanni Pacini
's
Allan Cameron
(18 March 1848, La Fenice); Elmina in Salvatore Sarmiento's
Elmina
(8 February 1851, Teatro Regio di Parma); Clemenza in Gualtiero Sanelli's
Il fornaretto
(24 March 1851, Teatro Regio di Parma); and Donna Eleonora in
Carlo Ercole Bosoni
's
La prigioniera
(16 January 1853, La Fenice).
She was generally thought to have retired from the stage in 1860. However, she is reported as singing at the
Theatre Royal de la Monnaie
in Brussels in 1877.
Fanny Salvini-Donatelli died in Milan in June 1891.
The
Traviata
"fiasco"
[
edit
]
Violetta's costume designed by Giuseppe Bertoja for the premiere of
La traviata
Verdi himself described the 1853 premiere of
La traviata
as a "fiasco".
Salvini-Donatelli was 38 years old at the time and quite stout. Her physical unsuitability for playing a beautiful young woman wasting away from
tuberculosis
is often cited as one of the reasons for the opera's initial failure. In the third act when the doctor announced that Violetta's illness had worsened and she had only hours to live, the first-night audience is said to have burst out laughing, with one member of the public shouting: "I see no
consumption
, only
dropsy
!"
Verdi himself had expressed serious doubts about Salvini-Donatelli's suitability for the role two months before the premiere and sent his librettist,
Francesco Piave
, to La Fenice's manager to convey his view that Violetta required a singer "with an elegant figure who is young and sings passionately".
[11]
His request for a casting change was unsuccessful.
Whatever the audience may have thought of Fanny Salvini-Donatelli's physical appearance, they were appreciative of her singing. Contemporary accounts show that her first act aria, "Sempre libera", received great applause. The critic in
La Gazzetta di Venezia
wrote the following day: "Salvini-Donatelli sang those coloratura passages, of which the maestro wrote so many, with an indescribable skill and perfection. She captivated the theatre."
[b]
The "failure" of the opening night performance was only relative. In addition to the applause for Salvini-Donatelli's aria, the orchestral
Prelude
was so well received that the audience began to shout for Verdi, who had to take curtain calls even before the curtain went up on the first act. Things only started derailing in the second act, especially the singing of the
baritone
(
Felice Varesi
) and the
tenor
(
Lodovico Graziani
).
La traviata
also did quite well at the box office. It ran for ten performances at La Fenice that season, with an average evening profit more than double that of Verdi's other two operas in the repertory there,
Ernani
and
Il Corsaro
.
In any case, a year later it was mounted again at the
Teatro San Benedetto
in Venice to an indisputably triumphant reception. On that occasion, the role of Violetta was taken by
Maria Spezia
who was thirteen years younger and considerably slimmer than Salvini-Donatelli.
The first night problems do not appear to have dissuaded Salvini-Donatelli from essaying the role again. She sang it at least three more times: in 1856 in
Istanbul
, when
Luigi Arditi
brought the opera to Turkey for the first time;
in 1857 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (the second revised version with the title
Violetta
);
and in 1858, when she sang it in London at the Drury Lane Theatre.
Operatic roles
[
edit
]
Fanny Salvini-Donatelli is known to have sung the following roles:
[c]
- Verdi
- Mina,
Aroldo
- Gulnara,
Il corsaro
- Lucrezia,
I due Foscari
- Elvira,
Ernani
- Giovanna,
Giovanna d'Arco
- Giselda,
I Lombardi alla prima crociata
- Lady Macbeth,
Macbeth
- Amalia,
I masnadieri
- Gilda,
Rigoletto
(under the title of
Viscardello
)
- Violetta,
La traviata
- Leonora,
Il trovatore
- Donizetti
- Pacini
- Editta,
Allan Cameron
- Beatrice,
Buondelmonte
- Lena,
Il saltimbanco
- Bellini
- Rossini
- Mercadante
- Petrella
- Balfe
- Olivia Campana,
Pittore e duca
- Poniatowski
- Sarmiento
[d]
- Gualtiero Sanelli
[
it
]
[e]
- Bosoni
- Donna Eleonora,
La prigioniera
- Pedrotti
- Platania
- Matilde,
Matilde Bentivoglio
- Peri
Notes and references
[
edit
]
Notes
- ^
Note that some sources, e.g.
Gatti (1955)
, p. 133, erroneously describe her at the second wife of
Tommaso Salvini
.
- ^
Original Italian: "La Salvini-Donatelli canto que' passi d'agilita, che molti per lei scrisse il maestro, con una perizia e perfezione da non dirsi : ella rapi il teatro." Quoted in
Anon. (1854)
, p. 22.
- ^
Data compiled primarily from
Casaglia (2005)
with additions from
Rescigno (2001)
,
Haine & Servais (2004)
,
Dwight (1859)
and
Conati (1992)
. This list may not be exhaustive.
- ^
Salvatore Sarmiento (1817?1869), Italian composer of several operas,
religious music
, and
Neapolitan songs
- ^
Gualtiero Sanelli (born Parma, 14 May 1816; died Maranhao, Brazil, 15 December 1861). He was the composer of several operas, successful in their day but now forgotten. See "Sanelli, Gualtiero" in
Sadie (1992)
.
References
Sources
- Anon. (1854).
"Teatri ? Venezia"
.
Teatri, arti e letteratura
(in Italian). Vol. 59, 1853?1854. Bologna: Gov. alla Volpe.
- Anon. (1859).
"(review)"
.
Town Talk
. Vol. 1, 8 May 1858 ? 14 May 1859. H. Tuck.
- Boyden, Matthew; Kimberley, Nick; Staines, Joe (2002).
The Rough Guide to Opera
. Rough Guides.
ISBN
1-85828-749-9
.
- Bomberger, E. Douglas (1999).
Brainard's Biographies of American Musicians
. Greenwood.
ISBN
0-313-30782-2
.
- Casaglia, Gherardo (2005).
"Performances by Fanny Salvini-Donatelli"
. L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia
(in Italian)
.
- Conati, Marcello (January 1982).
"A Chronology of the First Performances of
Rigoletto
"
.
Bollettino Verdi
(in English and Italian).
3
(9). EDT srl: 1853ff.
ISBN
88-85065-87-2
.
- Conati, Marcello (1992).
L' Italia Musicale: 1847?1859
. Centro internazionale di ricerca sui periodici musicali, University of Maryland, College Park Center for Studies in Nineteenth-Century Music.
- Dwight, John Sullivan
(1859).
Dwight's Journal of Music
. Vol. 13?14. Oliver Ditson.
- Gatti, Carlo (1955).
Verdi, the Man and His Music
. Putnam.
- Haine, Malou; Servais, Franz (2004).
L'Apollonide de Leconte de Lisle et Franz Servais: 20 ans de collaboration
(in French). Editions Mardaga.
ISBN
2-87009-813-8
.
- Kimbell, David R. B. (1985).
Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism
. Cambridge University Press Archive.
ISBN
0-521-31678-2
.
- Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane
(1964). "The Truth About
Traviata
".
Opera News
. Vol. 28. Metropolitan Opera Guild.
Reprinted by the
Metropolitan Opera International Radio Broadcast Information Center
. Accessed 18 January 2009.
- Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane (February 1995).
"Venetian Glories"
.
Opera News
. Retrieved
18 January
2009
.
[
dead link
]
- Regli, Francesco
(1860).
Dizionario Biografico dei piu celebri poeti ed artisti melodrammatici, tragici e comici, maestri, concertisti, coreografi, mimi ballerini, scenografi, giornalisti impressarii ecc. ecc. che fiorirono in Italia dal 1800 al 1860
. Enrico Dalmazzo.
- Rescigno, Eduardo
[in Italian]
(2001).
Dizionario Verdiano
(in Italian). Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. pp. 473?474.
ISBN
88-17-86628-8
.
- Rosenthal, H.
;
Warrack, J.
(1979).
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera
(2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
- Sadie, Stanley
, ed. (1992).
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
. Macmillan.
ISBN
0-935859-92-6
.
- Salvini, Celso (1955).
Tommaso Salvini: nella storia del teatro italiano e nella vita del suo tempo
(in Italian). Cappelli.
- Teatro Regio di Parma
.
"Serie Carteggi - 1850 ? Fasc. III - Spettacoli"
. Archived from
the original
on 4 June 2011
. Retrieved
18 January
2009
.
- Von Buchau, Stephanie (1991).
"The Traviata Saga"
.
San Francisco Opera
June 2009. Archived from
the original
on 22 January 2009
. Retrieved
18 January
2009
.
Further reading
[
edit
]