Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810) - Sonata (I) in C (1786)

Buon compleanno Venanzio Rauzzini! 🎭🎉

Composer: Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810)
Work: Sonata (I) for the Piano-Forte with an Accompanyment for the Violin Adlibitum, Op.15 (1786)
Performers: Zsolt Kalló (violin); Tamás Szekendy (1961-2014, fortepiano)

Drawing: Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) - A Dancing Master's Ball (Assembly Room at Bath), June 26, 1790
HD image: https://flic.kr/p/2o5jBS1

Further info: https://www.discogs.com/es/sell/release/14921459
Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/5qx64Tck8xsx23DB4obreO

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Venanzio Rauzzini
(Camerino, nr Rome, bap. 19 December 1746 - Bath, 8 April 1810)

Italian soprano castrato and composer. After early studies in Rome and possibly also in Naples with Porpora, he made his début at the Teatro della Valle in Rome in Piccinni’s Il finto astrologo (7 February 1765). His first major role was in Guglielmi’s Sesostri at Venice during Ascension Fair 1766. In the same year he entered the service of the Elector Maximilian III Joseph at Munich, where he remained until 1772. He first appeared there in Traetta’s Siroe (Carnival 1767) and later that year was given leave to perform in Venice and in Vienna, where Mozart and his father heard him in Hasse’s Partenope. Burney, visiting Rauzzini in August 1772, praised his virtuosity and the quality of his voice, but was most impressed by his abilities as a composer and harpsichordist. His last known operatic performance in Munich was in Bernasconi’s Demetrio (Carnival 1772). According to Michael Kelly he was forced to leave because of difficulties with noblewomen engendered by his good looks. Rauzzini performed for two more years in Italy before moving permanently to England. Engaged for Carnival 1773 at Milan, he was primo uomo in Mozart’s Lucio Silla (26 December 1772) and in Paisiello’s Sismano nel Mogol (30 January 1773). In January Mozart wrote for him the brilliant motet Exultate, jubilate (kv165/158a). Later that year he sang at Venice and Padua, and in 1774 at Turin (Carnival) and Venice (Ascension Fair). From November 1774 to July 1777 Rauzzini sang regularly at the King’s Theatre in London, making his simultaneous début as singer and composer in the pasticcio Armida. Bingley reported that his acting in Sacchini’s Motezuma (7 February 1775) greatly impressed Garrick. Both Burney and Lord Mount Edgcumbe, however, deemed his voice sweet but too feeble, a defect Burney ascribed to Rauzzini’s devoting too much time to composition. Indeed, Rauzzini contributed arias to four other pasticcios in the season 1775-76 and wrote a comic opera, L’ali d’amore.

Piramo e Tisbe, his best-loved opera, was first staged in London on 16 March 1775 it was revived there in three other seasons and performed at many continental theatres. In the following years many of his works, both vocal and instrumental, were published in London. Rauzzini’s singing also gradually won over London audiences. For his last London appearance in 1777 he composed an Address of Thanks, presumably the cantata La partenza ‘sung by him and Miss Storace’. In the autumn of 1777 Rauzzini took up residence in Bath, where he managed concerts by many renowned performers, among them his pupils John Braham, Nancy Storace, Charles Incledon, Mrs Billington and Mme Mara. At Dublin in 1778 he met and taught Michael Kelly and promoted his career with advice to study in Naples. In the spring of 1781, again in London, Rauzzini sang in concerts with Tenducci and others and wrote the second act of the opera L’omaggio di paesani al signore del contado. He was intermittently in London during the next three seasons to stage his operas L’eroe cinese, Creusa in Delfo and Alina, o sia La regina di Golconda, which was heavily criticized by the Public Advertiser (10 May 1784). Ballets with music by him were performed at the King’s Theatre in the season 1783-84, and he also directed the production of Sarti’s Le gelosie villane (15 April 1784). During this period a scandal arose over his claim that certain arias in Sacchini’s operas were his own. He was not in London when his incidental music for Reynold’s Werter (originally performed at Bath) was used at Covent Garden on 14 March 1786, and after the London première of his unsuccessful opera La vestale (1 May 1787) he remained permanently at Bath in his handsome town house and sumptuous country villa in Perrymead. Among his many guests was Haydn, who wrote the canon Turk was a faithful dog and not a man during a visit from 2 to 5 August 1794. Near the end of his life Rauzzini published a set of 12 vocal exercises with an introduction summing up his ideas on the art of singing and reflecting his own tasteful execution. #ClassicalMusic