Giuditta Pasta
| Giuditta Pasta | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Negri 26 October 1797 Saronno, Italy |
| Died | 1 April 1865 (aged 67) Blevio, Italy |
| Occupation | Opera singer (soprano) |
| Years active | 1823-1854 |
Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Pasta (née Negri; 26 October 1797 – 1 April 1865), was an Italian soprano considered among the greatest of opera singers, to whom the 20th-century soprano Maria Callas was compared.
In fact, Susan Rutherford, in her examination of the art of Pasta, makes a specific comparison with Callas:
For the impact of corporeality on vocal timbre and delivery, and in the absence of Pasta's own explanations of its effect, we might turn to another distinctive attrice cantante (and one who sang much of Pasta's repertory) from a quite different period, Maria Callas. She also argued that gesture and facial expression must precede word in order to create the appropriate vehicle (in terms of the shaping of resonators) for the histrionically specific formation and colouring of sound — something made apparent in her own filmed performances.
Rutherford, continues by pointing out Pasta's singularity on the opera stage:
In the 1820s... the artwork was the performance. And the performance was essentially of a singer's individual characteristics and talents: the way his or her particular qualities — both vocal and histrionic — were given accent and shape within the compositional frame. This notion is most aptly illustrated by the Italian attrice cantante Giuditta Pasta. Her career began in 1815 and spanned a little more than twenty-five years: during its middle period, from 1822 to 1836, she was the acknowledged diva del mondo. But it isn't merely fame that makes Pasta interesting:... Pasta's singularity is measured rather by the tone and extent of the debates her celebrity provoked, by her influence on the operatic stage, and by the timing of her career at the transition from Rossinian opera to the works of Bellini and Donizetti (with all the stylistic ramifications this implied). No other singer during that period attracted as much intellectual discussion, or was regarded as of such significance in the articulation of theories around operatic practices. For such reasons alone, Pasta is deserving of critical attention.
Pasta studied in Milan with Giuseppe Scappa and Davide Banderali and later with Girolamo Crescentini and Ferdinando Paer among others. In 1816 she made her professional opera début in the world première of Scappa's Le tre Eleonore at the Teatro degli Accademici Filodrammatici in Milan. Later that year she performed at the Théâtre Italien in Paris as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Giulietta in Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli’s Giulietta e Romeo, and in two operas by Paer.
...
Wikipedia