Posillipo, near Naples 1580–83 - probably Naples, after 1642

Italian singer and instrumentalist, sister of Giovanni Battista Basile and Lelio Basile.
She was the mother of Leonora Baroni.
Little is known about her early life.
She may have been the singer in the household of Luigi Carafa Duke of Traetto
Between 1609 and 1610, when Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and his wife negotiated to bring her to Mantua, her husband, Mutio Baroni, a nobleman, was in Carafa’s service and she was in the employ of Carafa’s wife, Isabella Gonzaga.
Adriana and her family travelled to Mantua via Rome, Bracciano, Bagnaia (the country residence of Cardinal Montalto) and Florence, where her singing won her considerable acclaim (she was lodged in the house of Giulio Caccini and performed with Jacopo Peri, among others).
Adriana worked from June 1610 at the Mantuan court with other members of her family: Giovanni Battista and Lelio; her sisters Margherita and Vittoria, both singers; and her husband and their children Camillo, Leonora and Caterina. It was reported that Adriana’s repertory comprised over 300 songs in Italian and Spanish, which she sang from memory, accompanying herself on the harp or guitar.
Within a few months of her arrival, poets were sending verses to her and Monteverdi had declared her more gifted than Cardinal Montalto’s singer Ippolita Recupito and the Medici singer Francesca Caccini.
She and her husband were awarded a barony by Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and the family enjoyed further privileges under his son Ferdinando.
She visited Florence, Rome, Naples and Modena between 1618 and 1620, performing at court and in cardinals’ residences.
In Mantua in March 1621 she performed in Alessandro Guarini’s Licori, ovvero L’incanto d’amore, and she probably also had a role in Monteverdi’s intermedi to Le tre costanti, staged the following January for the marriage of Duke Ferdinando’s sister Eleonora to Emperor Ferdinand II.
In May 1623 Adriana accompanied Duke Ferdinando and Duchess Caterina to Venice.
Six months later she took part in musical gatherings in Rome, where she sang the Lamento d’Arianna to harpsichord accompaniment and on another evening improvised musical settings to stanzas from Marino’s L’Adone (an exercise Marino also requested of Francesca Caccini in a separate audience).
Having been granted a leave of absence from Mantua, Adriana and her husband continued on to Naples to settle personal affairs.
In the succeeding period she found favour with the Viceroy of Naples and contemplated, then decided against, entering the service of King Sigismund III of Poland, who had also tried to recruit Monteverdi.
Preparing to return to Mantua in 1626 after an absence of more than two years, she found that the Gonzagas no longer wanted her.
The next few years were spent mainly in Naples, where Adriana continued to be favoured by Don Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba and Viceroy of Naples.
In May 1630 she visited Florence and Genoa.
Then, in 1633, the Baroni family settled in Rome, where Adriana and her daughters Leonora and Caterina gave musical performances in their house and enjoyed generous support from Cardinal Antonio Barberini.
She was still performing in October 1639 when André Maugars reported hearing the trio sing, Adriana accompanying on the lira, Leonora on theorbo and Caterina on harp.
Until recently it was thought that Adriana died in Rome a short while later, but documents show that she left for Naples in November 1640 and was still living there in August 1642.
Adriana also composed: in 1616 Monteverdi recommended that she and her sisters write solos for the parts they were to sing in a dramatic entertainment.
Her singing was extolled by several poets in Teatro della glorie della signora Adriana Basile (1623, 2/1628) and L’idea della veglia (1640), by Francesco Rasi in La cetra di sette corde (1619), and by Marino in L’Adone, canto vii (1623) and Rime, II (edn. of 1629).
Her sister Margherita (d after 1639) was at Mantua from 1615 and in 1617 sang in Santi Orlandi’s Gli amori di Aci e Galatea, staged on Ferdinando Gonzaga’s marriage; she became the principal singer at the court in the 1620s. In 1630 she was among several Mantuan musicians in Vienna, and by January 1631 until apparently at least 1639 she held a position at the Imperial court.
However, she may have returned provisionally to Mantua: she is listed on the Mantuan court roster of 1632 and four years later she was the recipient of a gift of land there.  
Margherita accompanied one of Emperor Ferdinand II’s daughters to Poland in 1637.

Bibliography:

Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1960)

A. Solerti: Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea dal 1600 al 1637
P. Della Valle: Della musica dell’età nostra (1640), in A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin,1903/R)
A. Ademollo: La bell’Adriana ed altre virtuose del suo tempo alla corte di Mantova (Città di Castello, 1888)
J. Lionnet: ‘André Maugars: risposta data a un curioso sul sentimento della musica d'Italia’, (1985)
S. Parisi: ‘Licenza alla Mantovana: Frescobaldi and the Recruitment of Musicians for Mantua, 1612–15’, Frescobaldi Studies, ed. A. Silbiger (Durham, NC, 1987)
S. Parisi: Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627: an Archival Study (U. of Illinois, 1989)
J. Whenham: ‘The Gonzagas visit Venice’,(1993)
S. Parisi: ‘Musicians at the Court of Mantua during Monteverdi's Time: evidence from the Payrolls’, Musicologia Humana: Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. S. Gmeinwieser, D. Hiley and J. Riedlbauer (Florence, 1994)
S. Saunders: Cross, Sword, and Lyre: Sacred Music at the Imperial Court of Ferdinand II of Habsburg (1619–1637) (Oxford, 1995)
B. Glixon: ‘Scenes from the Life of Silvia Gailarti Manni, a Seventeenth-Century Virtuosa’, (1996)
J.W. Hill: Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto (Oxford, 1997)
S. Parisi: ‘New Documents concerning Monteverdi's Relations with the Gonzagas’, Monteverdi: studi e prospettive, ed. P. Besutti, T. Gialdroni and R. Baroncini (Florence, 1998)
D. Fabris: Mecenati e musicisti: documenti sul patronato artistico dei Bentivoglio di Ferrara nell’epoca di Monteverdi (1585–1645) (Lucca, 1999)
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

Argia Bertini, Dinko Fabris, Keith A. Larson, Susan Parisi