Giuditta Pasta

Giuditta Pasta, born Negri ( born April 9, 1798 in Saronno, near Milan, † April 1, 1865 in Blevio Lake Como ) was an Italian opera singer, only mezzo-soprano, soprano then.

Career

Because of the peculiarities of her voice and the use to which their relatively short career (1815-1840 and 1819-1835) is due, pasta could inspire the audience permanently, so that they remained as a prima donna assoluta to this day in the memory of dilettanti.

She received her musical education at the Conservatory in Milan in bonuses Asioli and Giuseppe Scappa, in his opera Le tre Eleonore 1815 she also made ​​her debut. Her first appearances in Brescia ( 1815) and in London ( 1817) were not successful. She continued her studies in Milan in 1819 Scappa and celebrated a successful debut in Venice. 1821/22 they won a triumph in Paris. Between 1824 and 1837 she sang regularly in London, Paris, Milan and Naples. Donizetti wrote his opera Anna Bolena for them ( 1830), Vincenzo Bellini 's operas La sonnambula and Norma (both 1831).

In 1840 they lived in retirement in their villa on Lake Como in Blevio Rocca Bruna, in which they died.

Reception

Stendhal held in Vie de Rossini ( Chapter 19 ) a eulogy to her and dedicated her even an entire chapter ( Chapter 35: Madame Pasta ); and also in his novel The Charterhouse of Parma it is short, almost anonymously mentioned ( Book II, chapter 26 ): " the famous Mrs. P *** ... sang the aria from Cimarosa: Source pupil tenere ," and Fabrizio 's soul cries from the body, because of the - on the hard but present - Clelia perduta ... Then Stendhal lets the diva singing an aria from Pergolesi.

Balzac also mentioned Pasta - short but explicit, in his novel The wife of thirty years (1842 ) when he compares Julie d' Aiglemont with the famous soprano - but, to the advantage of the protagonist, in the selected because of their dramatic mood of the aria willow: Assisa al piè d'un salice!