Until recently, the hiring of Italian singers by the Portuguese Crown during the second half of the eighteenth century has been approached mainly from an operatic point of view. However, with the exception of the five years prior to the...
moreUntil recently, the hiring of Italian singers by the Portuguese Crown during the second half of the eighteenth century has been approached mainly from an operatic point of view. However, with the exception of the five years prior to the Lisbon earthquake (1755) which witnessed an huge investment on the opera by King José I the Portuguese court stuck to the spectacular character of religious ceremonial as the dominant strategy for the representation of absolute power. From the circa 140 Italian singers employed by the Portuguese monarchy during this period, less than a half were to perform in the royal theatres or at the Royal Chamber concerts. Most of them would take up a career in church music at the Royal Chapel (which, at King João V's request was raised to Patriarchal status in 1716 through various Papal decrees) as well as in an extensive net of Lisbon churches and convents. Making use of sources like archive material, reports by foreign travellers along with musical scores, the present paper aims to analyse the social and professional status as well as the music-related activities of Italian singers who worked at the Royal Chapel and the Lisbon Patriarchal (which were established in different churches between 1755 and 1792) over a period of time that goes from 1750 to the departure of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil in 1807. The Italian musicians' 'diaspora', as Reinhard Strohm puts it, had a powerful impact in Portugal, not only in operatic terms (as it was the case in the majority of European countries), but, above all, in the field of church music. This impact was, otherwise, to be felt until the early years of the 19th century. The transalpine singers, counting among them many castrati originated from cities like Naples, Rome, Bologna, Genoa, Florence or Syracuse and were a highly regarded professional group. Building up the so-called `Choir of the Italians' at the Royal Chapel and the Patriarchal Church, they were paid three or four times higher wages than their fellow-singers in the `Choir of the Portuguese', let alone another privileges. In fact, the Portuguese singers who possessed best voices stood a certain chance of joining the `Choir of the Italians', but the amount of such promotions would always be rather limited. The Italians prevailed in the most important events held by the Court, coming to feel perfectly at home in the Portuguese musical life, both as singers and as composers, teachers, chapel masters, inspectors, choir apparitors, or others. The voices and the technical mastery of the most brilliant ones (such as Carlo Reina, Gianbattista Vasquez, Ansano Ferracutti or Taddeo Puzzi) are closely related to the virtuosity found in the writing of sacred music by the Court appointed composers (including high ranking figures like Giovanni Giorgi, David Perez or Niccolô Jommelli) as by the foremost Portuguese composers. A significant number of them returned to Italy upon their retirement; nevertheless, there were others who chose to stay in Portugal with their families. We have come full circle when some of their children, Lisbon born, are admitted at the Patriarchal Seminary to pursue their musical studies under Portuguese composers who, in turn, had been trained in Naples (for instance João de Sousa Carvalho or Jeronimo Francisco de Lima). This is the case of João José Balcli or Antonio Puzzi, significant composers of the next generation. Noteworthy is, for that matter, the career followed by the soprano Giuseppe Totti. After ten years of activity as a Royal Chapel singer, he comes to study composition under Sousa Carvalho. Eventually, Totti takes over his teacher's position as music master to the Portuguese royal family, becoming subsequently a prolific composer in the field of sacred music.
