Milan, 17 Oct 1720 - Milan, 19 Jan 1795

Composer.

As a girl she performed in her home while her elder sister Maria Gaetana (1718–99; she became a distinguished mathematician) lectured and debated in Latin. Charles de Brosses, who heard them on 16 July 1739 and was highly impressed, reported that Maria Teresa performed harpsichord pieces by Rameau and sang and played compositions of her own invention.
Her first cantata, Il restauro d’Arcadia, was written in honour of the Austrian govenor G. Pallavicini in Milan in 1747.
In the following years, she sent La Sofonisba to Vienna for possible performance on Empress Maria Theresa’s nameday. At about this time she dedicated collections of her arias and instrumental pieces to the rulers of Saxony and Austria; according to Simonetti the Empress Maria Theresa sang arias that Agnesi had given her.
She married Pier Antonio Pinottini on 13 June 1752.
Her next opera, Ciro in Armenia, was produced at the Regio Ducale in 1753. In 1766 her Insubria consolata was performed in Milan on the engagement of Beatrice d’Este and the Archduke Ferdinand.
Her final years were spent in poverty.
Her portrait hangs in the museum of La Scala; other are reproduced in the encyclopedia Storia di Milano (vols. XII, XIV).
Agnesi’s career as a theatrical composer was made possible by the changes in women’s status taking place in Austrian Lombardy.
Her talents seem to have found a warmer reception in Vienna and Dresden than in her native city, to judge by the elegant copies of La Sofonisba, Il re pastore and the arias produced for these courts.
Stylistically, her operas show a progression from relative simplicity (Ciro in Armenia) to more ambitious and virtuoso writing in the later works.
Il re pastore and Ulisse feature lengthy ritornellos and use da capo form almost exclusively; several of the arias  in Il re pastore and in La Sofonisba are miniature two-part scenas.
The latter opera includes some of Agnesi’s most powerful writing; Sophonisba’s last aria before dying, ‘Già s’appressa il fatal momento’, is a particularly moving and dramatic close to an opera seria. Agnesi’s keyboard music, less sharply characterized, is sometimes technically challenging, in a generic north Italian style.

Bibliography:

Fétis: Biographie universelle des musiciens
Gerber: Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkunstler
Schmidl: Dizionario universale dei musicisti
G.M. Mazzuchelli: Gli scrittori d’Italia (Brescia, 1753)
C. de Brosses: Lettres historiques et critiques sur l’Italie (Paris, 1798–99
M.G. Agnesi: Letters
L. Anzoletti: Maria Gaetana Agnesi (Milan, 1900)
G. Seregni: La cultura milanese nel Settecento, Storia di Milano, XII (1959)
G. Barblan: Il teatro musicale in Milano: il Settecento, Storia di Milano (1959)
C. de Jong: The Life and Keyboard Works of Maria Teresa d’Agnesi (U. of Minnesota, 1978)
R.L. Kendrick: La Sofonista by Maria Teresa Agnesi: Composition and Female Heroism between Milan and Vienna’, Il teatro musicale italiano nel Sacro romano impero nei secoli XVII e XVIII : Loveno di Menaggio (1997)
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

 Sven Hansell and Robert L. Kendrick.

 Works:

II restauro d’Arcadia (cant. pastorale, G. Riviera), Milan, Regio Ducale, 1747, lost
La Sofonisba (dramma eroico, 3, G.F. Zanetti), Vienna, ?1747/48 Act 3
Ciro in Armenia (dramma serio, 3, ? Agnesi), Milan, Regio Ducale, 26 Dec 1753 Act 3
Il re pastore (dramma serio, 3, P. Metastasio), ?1755
L’Insubria consolata (componimento drammatico, 2), Milan, 1766
Nitocri (dramma serio, 3, A. Zeno) Act 2
Ulisse in Campania (serenata, 2)
12 arias
Aria en Murki
4 concs (F F F D) in 1766
Sonata, G, cited in 1767
Sonata, F,
Allegro ou Presto
Allemande militare & Menuetto grazioso
Concerto , E , harpsicord, cited in 1766, lost