#anna giro

[fuckyeahfarinelli]

Il teatro alla moda - a TV series set in the first half of the 18 century following the lives of artists from the musical period known as opera seria.

Act II

Venice, 1720, after a few years of absence Antonio Vivaldi comes back from Mantua to his hometown. The red-haired priest, who is also a skilled violinist and a composer, is not welcomed as warmly as he expected. His operas fail one after another because of the pamphlet titled Il Teatro alla moda that attacks his composing skills. The small opera house that stages his work can’t afford any of the famous singers and the ones he works with are still unbearable. Plagued with increasing breathing problems and bitter due lack of success, Vivaldi comes back to his easygoing, yet not well-paid job as a violin maestro in Ospedale della Pietà. One day an unknown teenager arrives to the Red Priest’s home. The girl introduces herself as Anna Girò and claims that after hearing Vivaldi’s opera in Mantua her biggest dream is to sing only his pieces. Irritated composer wants to get rid of her as quickly as possible, but the girl is so stubborn that he finally capitulates and lets the young singer perform. After a few notes it is clear that Anna can’t sing at all. The cynical man laughs openly at the girl’s lack of talent. Girò, humiliated and offended wants to leave, but Vivaldi’s laugh suddenly turns into a violent cough and the man fells on the floor, suffocating. Thanks to Anna’s older sister, Paolina, his life is saved, yet Anna’s youthful enthusiasm restores his lost faith in music...

“To the Music Composers – The modern Music Composer should possess no knowledge about the Rules of good composition, except for some principle of universal practice... He should not understand the numeric Musical Proportions, nor the optimal effect of contrary Motions, or the bad Relation of Tritones and augmented Intervals.” Benedetto Marcello, Il teatro alla moda (The Fashionable Theater)

[fuckyeahfarinelli]

Co-stars & Rivals: A N N A G I R Ò

Born: Mantua, c1710

Died: after 1747

Voice: contralto

Personality:  Anna Girò is known above all for her professional association with Antonio Vivaldi -  a relationship suspected, at the time, of carrying over into their private lives, although modern research suggests the opposite. Anna’s father was a wig-maker of French extraction. The singer’s actual name was Teseire – Italianized to Tessieri – whereas Giro was a sobriquet her father had used. About 1722 she went to Venice to study singing, living with an elder half-sister, Paolina, who acted as her chaperone. She made her operatic début in Treviso in autumn 1723; her first appearance on the Venetian stage was in Albinoni's Laodice (autumn 1724). Giro sang in over 50 operatic productions. She started, in her early teens, with minor travesty roles, then graduated to seconda donna and soon also to prima donna roles. Vivaldi, for whom she sang (nearly always as prima donna) in over 30 productions from 1726 to 1739, appears to have been her principal mentor. He once declared, with evident exaggeration, that he could not put on an opera without her, but she was well able to operate independently of him, as she proved during his transalpine tour of 1729 - 31 (when Giro was performing alongside Farinelli in Broschi’s Ezio and Porpora’s Poro)  and again after his death in 1741.   Her very successful career lasted until 1748, when, after singing in Piacenza at Carnival, she married a widowed count from that city, Antonio Maria Zanardi Landi, and retired honourably from the stage.

One fact: The amendments to the libretto of Zeno's Griselda that Vivaldi instructed Goldoni to make in 1735 were designed to hide her defects and promote her strengths.

One quote: She was not pretty, but she had charms, a very slim waist, beautiful eyes, lovely hair, a charming mouth, and a small voice, but a great deal of acting ability. (Carlo Goldoni)

One hit:  Svena, uccidi, abbatti, atterra  (Bajazet)