Giuseppina Maria Camilla (also Josephina) Grassini (b. April 18, 1773 in Varese, Italy – January 3, 1850 in Milan) was a noted Italian contralto, and a singing teacher. She was also one of Napoleon's lovers as well as lover to the Duke of Wellington.
Contents |
After growing up under the musical guidance of her mother, an amateur violinist, and Domenico Zucchinetti in Varese, and Antonio Secchi in Milan, Grassini made her stage début in 1789 in Parma singing in Guglielmi’s La pastorella nobile, and the following year at Milan’s La Scala in three opere buffe among which included Guglielmi’s La bella pescatrice. These first comic performances were not a great success, and Grassini was driven to resume the study of singing and to turn to drama.
From 1792 she returned fully to the stage in the theatres of Vicenza, Venice, Milan again, Naples and Ferrara. She sang (among others) in the first Scala performance of Zingarelli’s Artaserse (1793), in the première of Portugal’s Demofoonte (1794), in Bertoni’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Euridice), in Mayr’s Telemaco nell’isola di Calipso (première, 1797), in Cimarosa’s Artemisia regina di Caria (première, 1797) and in the first Fenice performance of Nasolini’s La morte di Semiramide (1798, title role). Her year of glory, however, was 1796, when she created two roles which remained in the repertoire for some decades and are now famous, in both appearing beside the soprano castrato Girolamo Crescentini, who was also Grassini's master and whose teachings she followed faithfully throughout her life. Nicola Zingarelli wrote the part of Giulietta for her in his opera Giulietta e Romeo, staged at Milan’s La Scala on January 30, while Domenico Cimarosa composed the role of Horatia (Orazia) in Gli Orazi e i Curiazi, staged instead in northern Italy’s second most important theatre, Venice’s La Fenice, on December 26. In that same year Grassini took part moreover in a third première of Gaetano Marinelli's Issipile, which was by no means as successful as the others.
On June 4, 1800, shortly before the victory at Marengo, while interpreting Andreozzi’s La vergine del sole at La Scala, Milan, Grassini (who was, by this time, already well known for her unruly love affairs) made a strong hit with Napoleon Bonaparte. He enrolled her among his lovers and brought her to Paris,[1] where she sang in several concerts. Grassini’s relationship with the First Consul was probably not convenient, but it was a sign of her modern, free attitude, so that when she in turn took a liking to the violinist Pierre Rode, she did not hesitate to embark upon a fresh affair with him (practically under the nose of the future Emperor), and to quit Paris for a 1801 concert tour in Holland and Germany, returning finally to Italy.
In the years 1804 and 1805 Grassini was in London where, at the King's Theatre, she sang in some revivals of Andreozzi’s La vergine del sole, Nasolini’s La morte di Cleopatra and Fioravanti’s Camilla, as well as in the premières of von Winter’s Il ratto di Proserpina and Zaira. In “Il ratto” there appeared Elizabeth Billington, too, and the two prima-donnas confronted each other in a singing contest from which the Italian singer emerged triumphant.
In 1806 Grassini returned to Paris together with her former master Crescentini, where she was appointed first chamber virtuosa of Emperor Napoleon. At the Tuileries Palace Grassini was on stage as the protagonist in the première of Paër’s La Didone and in Cherubini’s Pimmalione.
After settling in Rome during Napoleon’s exile on the Isle of Elba, she went back to Paris during the Hundred Days. Having stayed there after the Restoration, she also became the lover of Wellington. He was at that time appointed British ambassador in France, but Grassini was soon forced to leave French territory because Louis XVIII was unwilling to tolerate the great popularity of Napoleon’s former lover.[2]
After a further stay in London, where she had been engaged at the Haymarket Theatre, and where she took part in the première of Pucitta’s Aristodemo, she eventually made her way back to Italy and there continued to sing in operatic theatres. She sang in Brescia, Padua, Trieste, Florence and, in 1817, again at La Scala, without, however, achieving such success as formerly she had been accorded. She retired from the stage in 1823 and finally settled in Milan, giving herself up also to teaching, among other pupils, Giuditta Pasta and her own nieces Giulia and Giuditta Grisi. She died at the age of 76 in 1850.
Although critics as usual could not agree, Giuseppina Grassini was undoubtedly one of the greatest stage singers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Commonly classed as a contralto, Grassini sang, in fact, in tessiture which would later be ascribed to mezzo-sopranos [3] and had rather a narrow vocal range. She could however rely upon a voice of great power and volume and, at the same time, of considerable pliability, to which she added excellent interpretative capability and, moreover, extraordinary physical beauty. This last quality made her not only the subject of many love affairs but also the ideal model for many contemporary painters including Andrea Appiani.
Faithful to her "old" [4] master and partner Crescentini's musical ideals, Grassini would always stand beside such singers as the castrato Gaspare Pacchiarotti, the tenors Matteo Babini, Giovanni Ansani and Giacomo David, the prime-donne Brigida Banti and Luísa Todi de Agujar. These were the singers who opposed the belcanto drift of the second half of the 18th century, with its break-neck run after extremely high notes and aimlessly pyrotechnic, inexpressive, and therefore absurd coloratura; and who endeavoured, instead, to recover “the passion and vigour” that had permeated the golden age of singing of the first half of the century.
She was therefore one of a particular group of leading singers who in this way helped to establish a new artistic trend, which soon evolved into 'the Rossini grand finale' [5] of an entire musical era. Being the youngest of all the mentioned singers, Grassini herself formed a living link between them and the following generation.[6] Acute (as usual) when writing about opera, Stendhal observed of his favourite singer of the new generation, Giuditta Pasta:
"(She) is probably too young to have seen Todi, Pacchierotti, Marchesi, Crescentini on stage; she has never had the chance of hearing them with the piano; still, the melomanes that heard them say she sounds like a pupil of theirs. As for singing, she is indebted to nobody but Mrs. Grassini, with whom she sang during a season in Brescia"[7]
- and by whose side, Stendhal could have added, she was an ideal Curiatius[8] in several revivals of Cimarosa’s opera.
The list below although not exhaustive is representative of Grassini's Italian career.[9]
| role | opera | genre | composer | theatre | première’s date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polissena | Pirro | opera seria-pasticcio (dramma per musica, 2nd version) | Francesco Gardi, Francesco Bianchi, Sebastiano Nasolini and Nicola Antonio Zingarelli, | Venice, Teatro (Venier) San Benedetto | 8 May 1793 |
| Giulietta | Giulietta e Romeo | tragedia per musica (opera seria) | Nicola Antonio Zingarelli | Milan, Teatro alla Scala | 30 January 1796 |
| Issipile | L'Issipile | dramma per musica (opera seria) | Gaetano Marinelli | Venice, Teatro alla Fenice | 12 November 1796 |
| Orazia | Gli Orazi e i Curiazi | tragedia per musica (1st version) | Domenico Cimarosa | Venice, Teatro alla Fenice | 26 December 1796 |
| Calipso | Telemaco nell'isola di Calipso | dramma per musica | Giovanni Simone Mayr | Venice, Teatro Sant'Angelo | 16 January 1797 |
| Artemisia | Artemisia regina di Caria | dramma serio per musica | Domenico Cimarosa | Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo | 12 June 1797 |
| === | Consalvo di Cordova | opera seria | Giuseppe Maria Curcio (Curci) | Naples, Real Teatro San Carlo | 13 August 1797 |
| Alceste | Alceste | tragedia per musica | Marcos Antônio Portugal | Venice, Teatro alla Fenice | 26 December 1798 |
| mother | Chant national du 14 juillet 1800 | operatic-patriotic hymn-scene | Étienne-Nicolas Méhul | Paris, Hôtel des Invalides (Temple de Mars) | 14 July 1800 |
| Venere | Pimmalione | dramma lirico | Luigi Cherubini | Paris, Théâtre des Tuileries | 30 November 1809 |