Mozart Divas

Mozart Contemporaries / Sopranos

 

Sopranos who sang for Mozart in his time

Prominent divas of Mozart's day include Catarina Cavalieri, Adriana Ferraresi, and Nancy Storace. They sang in his operas from 1781 when he moved from Salzburg to Vienna where he eventually died in December 1791.
The divas included Catarina Cavalieri (Austrian soprano), Adriana Ferraresi del Bene (Italian soprano), Maria Anna Gottlieb (Austrian singer and actress), Aloysia (née Weber) Lange (German soprano who became his sister-in-law but he initially he fell in love with), Josefa (née Weber) Hofer Mayer (a dramatic soprano, another sister-in-law, the oldest sister of his wife Constanze), Nancy Storace (Italian-born English soprano, sister of composer Stephen Storace), and few other divas.

Mozart collaborated with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte in three of his greatest operas – Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte - and the last one in 1791, Die Zauberflöte, with Emanuel Schikaneder. Continue reading ... Mozart's Divas in his Day.



Resources:

• The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, edited by Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe, Cambridge UP, 2007

• The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan, 2000

• The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham, 2002

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