? - fl Venice, c1800 - ?

Italian singer, teacher and composer.
She was a foundling admitted in infancy to the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice.
From early childhood she received a thorough musical education in the coro (music school) and became a soprano soloist, singing teacher and administrator in the school.
She is identified as a soloist in manuscripts of motets commissioned from Giovanni Porta and Andrea Bernasconi, and is singled out for praise in the anonymous verse tribute to musicians of the cori at the Pietà dating from about 1740 (I-Vmc Codice Cicogna, 1178, carte 206–122, stanzas 18–20).
Only two motet settings by her survive. The first, Novo aprili, in F major, is inscribed to ‘Louisa Della Sga Agnatta’ (Vc correr esposti, 94 no.545, 18); the second is of Psalm cxxxiv for compline, Ecce nunc, also in F (Vc correr esposti, 64 no. 187, 42), for which only an instrumental bass part remains).
She also produced a pedagogical text, Regali per Gregoria, for one of her pupils, Gregoria, an alto soloist between 1746 and 1777.

Bibliography:

K. Meyer-Baer: Der chorische Gesang der Frauen (Leipzig, 1917)
G. Rostirolla: ‘L’organizzazione musicale nell’Ospedale veneziano della Pietà al tempo di Vivaldi’, Rivista Musicale Italiana, XIII (1979)
J.L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations, 1525–1855 (Oxford, 1993)
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

Jane L. Berdes