Lucrezia Aguiari (sometimes spelled Agujari) (1743/46 in Ferrara – 18 May 1783 in Parma) was an Italian coloratura soprano. She possessed an unusually agile voice with a large vocal range that spanned slightly more than three and a half octaves, faculties that enabled her to perform the most difficult passage work. In a letter dated 24 March 1770 Mozart wrote of hearing her perform a C an octave above high C at the Ducal opera of Parma, "I could not believe that she was able to reach C soprano acuto, but my ears convinced me." Aldous Huxley mentioned this event in his novel Brave New World (with her name misspelled as "Ajugari").
Biography
Born in Ferrara, Aguiari was often referred to during her lifetime as "La Bastardina" or "La Bastardella". There are several different traditions explaining the origin of this nickname, one being that she was the illegitimate child of one Leopoldo Aguiari or that of his wife with a Marchese Bentivoglio. Another possible explanation was that she was an abandoned child raised by Aguiari. A curiosity associated with her was a pronounced limp that was reportedly the result of a dog or hog eating part of her leg while she was an infant.
Aguiari studied music with the composer Brizio Petrucci in Ferrara and was further educated at a convent in Florence, where she received singing lessons from Abbé Lambertini. Her first recorded operatic appearances took place in her native Ferrara during the carnival operatic season of 1765, specifically in a work by her teacher Petrucci (a setting of Metastasio's libretto Demofoonte) and Johann Adolph Hasse's opera Artaserse. Later in 1765, she made appearances in opera houses in Padua, Verona and Lucca, with further appearances in Mantua, Lucca and Ferrara in 1766.
Transcription by Mozart in letter of 24 March 1770 of coloratura by Agujari
Aguiari's professional status was markedly enhanced beginning in the carnival operatic season of 1767, when she appeared for the first time at the Ducal Theater in Parma, where she became a court singer for the local ruler, Ferdinand I, Duke of Parma. Her service at the court of Parma is asserted in librettos until 1780, when she appeared in Francesco Bianchi's opera Demetrio in Venice. Aguiari appeared in many operatic roles outside of Parma during this time. In 1768, she was able to appear for the first time at the prestigious Teatro San Carlo in Naples, where she sang the title role at the world premiere of Paisiello's Le nozze di Peleo e Tetide on the occasion of the wedding ceremony of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and the Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria. She was also able to savor great successes in Milan, Paris, Turin, and London.
In 1773, Aguiari was engaged to sing in Pavia for the opening of a new theater that featured a performance of Josef Mysliveček's opera Demetrio. In the role of Cleonice, she sang the aria "Agitata in tanti affanni," a virtuoso display piece frequently disseminated in 18th-century music manuscripts that highlighted her renowned ability to sing with great dexterity in a very high tessitura. Even though Aguiari and Mysliveček were close professional associates for the purpose of this production, there is no documentation to support reports that they were ever involved romantically, in spite of many reports that appear in the musicological literature. No mention of a love affair with Mysliveček pre-dates the publication of the fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954).
In 1780, Aguiari married the composer Giuseppe Colla (1731–1806). Colla, a native of Parma, would have met Aguiari at the time of her appearance in his opera Tigrane, which was given in Parma during the carnival operatic season of 1765, shortly after she first arrived there. Aguiari is known to have appeared in seven further productions of operas by Colla during the course of her career, more than by any other composer. She left the stage after the close of the summer opera season at Genoa in 1782 due to ill health. Although it was rumoured that she was poisoned by a jealous rival, she actually died of tuberculosis in 1783 at the age of 40.
↑A complete list of Aguiari's operatic roles is compiled in Corago Singers project, Lucrezia Aguiari. Contrary to numerous claims, there is no record of her appearance in any operatic roles in Florence in 1764. None of the operatic works known to have been performed there in 1764 record her name in their cast lists, as confirmed in the listings provided in Corago.unibo.it/Eventi
↑This finding is documented in Freeman (2022), 37, 40, 100. Freeman points out that even though articles on Mysliveček in the Grove Dictionaries make reference to a love affair with Aguiari, there is no mention of it in the articles on Aguiari or Caterina Gabrielli (another singer frequently linked romantically with Mysliveček in error).
