Tommaso Guarducci

Tommaso Guarducci (c. 1720 – 10 January 1803) was one of the most renowned Italian castrato singers of the 18th century, the interpreter of many starring operatic roles in various musical centers of Europe, most importantly Rome, Naples, London, and Florence.

Early life and career

He was born in Montefiascone, in the Papal States (now in the central Italian province of Viterbo, Lazio) around the year 1720. No details of his early training are known other than a period of study in Bologna at some time with the noted contralto castrato Antonio Bernacchi. His first known operatic role was Dorinda in the pasticcio La Flora in Urbino during the carnival operatic season of 1743. It was very common in 18th-century Italy for castratos to initiate their operatic careers in female roles, particularly in the Papal States, in which females were frequently barred from appearing in operatic roles by the popes, most particularly in Rome (Urbino lay within the boundaries of the Papal States after 1626). Guarducci's appearance in La Flora was received favorably, and it led to an invitation in 1744 by the Congregazione di Santa Cecilia to sing as a soprano at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Guarducci's period of activity in Rome at this time is documented up to the year 1749.

Guarducci's distinguished international singing career began in 1750, when the renowned castrato Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) invited him to travel to Madrid to join the musical establishment of King Ferdinand VI. The exact nature of his activities at the royal court of Spain remains unknown. All that is certain is that there is no record of his participation in any operatic productions sponsored by the court. Guarducci left Madrid in 1754 to sing in a production of L’Artaserse by Davide Perez that took place in Lisbon in June. He shared the stage with the great German tenor Anton Raaff, who was resident in Lisbon between 1752 and 1755 as a part of a great period of operatic productions at the Portuguese court sponsored by King Joseph I, a notable opera enthusiast, whose activities as a patron were interrupted by the great Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755. Neither Guarducci nor Raaff were present in Lisbon when the earthquake struck. Raaff had moved to Madrid during the summer of 1755, whereas Guarducci left Lisbon or Italy in March of the same year.

Professional maturity and retirement

The remainder of the 1750s brought engagements for Guarducci in three of the most prestigious operatic centers in Europe, first in Vienna during the winter of 1755-56, in which he appeared in Gluck’s opera L'innocenza giustificata. He next appeared in Reggio Emilia in 1756 and Milan for the carnival operatic season of 1757. A very important period of activity for Guarducci began in the summer of 1757, when he made his first appearance at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the most prestigious venue in Europe at the time for productions of opera seria. He remained in Naples with minor interruptions until early in 1762, with appearances in two operas each by Johann Adolph Hasse and Johann Christian Bach (the most significant work by the latter Catone in Utica of 1761). From this time until his arrival in London in 1767, Guarducci was itinerant, with appearances in Florence, Pisa, Siena, Parma, Rome, and Palermo. His last appearance in Florence in Antonio Sacchini’s Artemisia took place early in the reign as Grand Duke of Tuscany of the Archduke Leopold of Austria (later Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II). Undoubtedly due to the success of his appearance in Sacchini's opera, Guarducci received an appointment from Leopold as a court musician. His title “virtuoso di S.A.R. il Gran Duca di Toscana” (“musician to His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Tuscany”), or variants, is first found in the libretto for Johann Christian Bach's opera Carattaco, performed during the carnival season of 1767 in London. From this time, Guarducci's position at the grand ducal court of Tuscany was recorded routinely in the cast lists of librettos until the end of his operatic career.

Guarducci's appearances at the King's Theatre, Haymarket (now known as His Majesty's Theatre, London), in 1767 and 1768 may be described as a high point in the singer's career. He appeared with great acclaim in eight productions, one of them, a Sifare with music mainly by Carl Friedrich Abel, a “benefit” in his honor (in the 18th century, a “benefit” musical performance meant that the proceeds were turned over to a musician, not to a charity). Burney also recorded a benefit concert in the spring of 1768 for Guardasoni that featured Niccolò Jommelli’s oratorio Betulia liberata of 1743, and it was also well received. Burney included a brief illustration of Guarducci's famous ability to sing effectively at a soft dynamic: “Guarducci, instead of an opera, had for his benefit this spring the oratorio of Betulia Liberata, set by Jommelli, in which among many admirable compositions, an air of supplication, through which were heard cries of the people in a distant chorus, sung extremely soft, was justly admired for its new and fine effect.”

Other notable operas in which Guarducci appeared in London include Carattaco by Johann Christian Bach (1767), La conquista del Messico by Mattia Vento (1767), and Ifigenia in Aulide by Giovanni Paisiello (1768). It was at this time that Guarducci first came into contact with the English music critic and music historian Charles Burney, who left vivid accounts of his activities. In his A General History of Music, Burney included a special section devoted to Guarducci's period of activity in London in 1767 and 1768, including an eloquent evaluation of his singing style and perceptive remarks about the tastes of the English music public. He described Guarducci as a “tall and awkward figure, inanimate as an actor, and in countenance ill-favoured and morbid; but with all these disadvantages, he was a man of great probity and worth in his private character, and one of the most correct singers I have ever heard”. He continued as follows:

.He was unfortunate in arriving here so soon after [Giovanni] Manzuoli, the impressions of whose great voice and majestic manner of singing had not been effaced by his immediate successor, [Filippo] Elisi. Guarducci's voice, though of much less volume than Manzuoli's, was clear, sweet, and flexible. His shake and intonations were perfect, and by long study and practice he had vanquished all the difficulties of his art, and possessed himself of every refinement of his particular school, as well as of the general vocal embellishments of Italy at this period. Though prejudice ran high against him on his first arrival in London, his merit at length made its way, and his highly polished manner of singing was very much approved and felt by the principal professors and persons of taste and discernment who heard him. He soon discovered that a singer could not captivate the English by tricks or instrumental execution, and told me years after, at Montefiascone in Italy, that the gravity of our taste had been of great use to him. “The English,” says he, “are such friends to the composer, and to simplicity, that they like to hear a melody in its primitive state, undisguised by change or embellishment. Or, if, when repeated, when riffioramenti [“embellishments”] are necessary [meaning in the repeat of the “A” section in an ABA da capo aria or dal segno aria], the notes must be few and well selected, to be honoured with approbation.” Indeed, Guarducci was the plainest and most simple singer, of the first class, I ever heard. All his effects were produced by expression and high finishing, nor did he ever aim at execution. He sung in the English oratorios upon short notice, with very little knowledge of our language, and still less practice in pronouncing it. However, he was well received and well paid. For he had £600 for twelve oratorios, a larger sum than was ever given on a like occasion, till the time of Miss [Elizabeth Ann] Linley.

After returning to Italy from London in 1768 (sometime after the closing of the King's Theatre in London on 30 June), Guarducci made his principal appearances at the Teatro Argentina in Rome during the carnival operatic seasons of 1769 and 1770, his most successful role as Enea in Niccolò Piccinni’s Didone abandonnata. In April 1770, he appeared in Bologna in La Nitteti by Josef Mysliveček, the beginning of a profitable period of collaboration with that composer. It is possible that he encountered Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart at this time, since they were also present in Bologna during the preparations for Mysliveček's opera. However, no confirmation of a meeting survives.

Partially as a result of his enormous earnings in London, he had a luxurious villa built in his native city of Montefiascone with a view that overlooked Lake Bolsena. Charles Burney renewed his acquaintance with Guarducci when he visited Montefiascone as part of a tour of Italy detailed in his Present State of Music in France and Italy and noted in a report of the visit dated 18 September 1770 that his villa showed evidence of English interior design. Guarducci informed Burney that he intended to retire from his operatic career permanently:

[On] my way to Rome, I visited Signor Guarducci, who has here built himself a very good house, and fitted it up in the English manner, with great taste. He had already been apprized of my journey into Italy, and received me in the politest manner imaginable. He was so obliging as to let me hear him, in a song of Signor Sacchini's composition, which he sung divinely. His voice, I think, is more powerful then when he was in England, and his taste and expression seem to have received every possible degree of selection and refinement. He is a very chaste performer, and adds but few notes; those few notes, however, are so well chosen, that they produce great effects, and leave the ear thoroughly satisfied. He has a winter-house in Florence, and has built this at Montefiascone, the place of his birth, to retire in summer, and to receive his mother, and his brothers and sisters ... He says he has totally quitted the stage, and intends singing no more in public: this is a loss to Italy, as I find he is now allowed by the Italians the first place among all the singers of the present period; and, at Rome, they still speak of his performance in Piccinni's Didone abbandonata, with rapture ...

Although he told Burney that he had no intention of singing in public any longer, he soon did begin to appear in works written by Josef Mysliveček for Florence, including all three of his last oratorios: Adamo ed Eva (1771), La passione (1773), and Isacco, figura del redentore (1776). He next appeared in an opera for the first time since 1770 as Farnaspe in the première of Mysliveček's opera Adriano in Siria on 8 September 1776 (and in Giovanni Paisiello’s La disfatta di Dario in October as part of the autumn operatic season in Florence that year). It is not known whether or not Mysliveček himself was mainly responsible for encouraging Guarducci to continue his professional singing career. He certainly was a close associate of Guarducci, however, one of two great 18th-century castratos with whom he was close to over a period of several years (the other was Luigi Marchesi, whom he began to cultivate shortly after Guarducci's retirement). Guarducci's last operatic appearances took place during the carnival operatic season of 1777 in Perugia in revivals of Mysliveček's Adriano in Siria and Antonio Sacchini's Il Cidde.

The Reminiscences of the Irish tenor Michael Kelly provide some of the last significant documentation of Guarducci's activities, including fresh testimony about his abilities at singing in a “natural” sounding cantabile style with minimal ornamentation at an understated dynamic level and his prominence on the operatic stages of his day. He claimed to have met Guarducci in Florence in 1778 and had this to say about him: “I had the good fortune to be noticed by Signor Guarducci [in Florence], the celebrated soprano, and he gave me a few lessons. He had been the first cantabile singer of his time, and his sostenuto singing was still admirable. I went to pass a few days with him, at a villa which he had built, on his retirement from public life, at Montefiascone, his native town ... Signor Guarducci was a liberal and hospitable landlord; and I shall ever retain a grateful sense of his kindness.” The mocking French pamphleteer Ange Goudar, writing under the pseudonym “Jean-Jacques Sonnette”, in 1777 reported that Guarducci had suffered from a chest inflammation that troubled him for 40 years, and that by the time of writing, “he no longer sings, but pretends to sing”.

Without any further record of operatic appearances, it was long believed that Guarducci died about the year 1780, however his date of death has now been established as 10 January 1803 in Montefiascone. Any activity as a singer after Guarducci's last operatic appearances in 1777 likely would have been in sacred works at unknown venues.

Operatic roles

• Dorinda in the pasticcio La Flora (Urbino, 1743)
• Artaserse in Artaserse by Davide Perez (Lisbon, 1754)
• Elpino in Le cacciatrici amanti by Georg Christoph Wagenseil (Laxenburg, 1755)
• Flavio in L'innocenza giustificata by Christoph Willibald Gluck (Vienna, 1755)
• Mosè in Il roveto di Mosè by Georg Cristoph Wagenseil (Vienna, 1756)
• Elpino in Le cacciatrici amanti by Georg Christoph Wagenseil (Vienna, 1756)
• Osmino in Il Solimano by Giovanni Battista Pescetti (Reggio Emilia, 1756)
• Arbace in Artaserse by Quirino Gasparini (Milan, 1757)
• Ezio in Ezio by Baldassare Galuppi (Milan, 1757)
• Sirbace in Rosbale by Giuseppe Scolari (Padua, 1757)
• Ezio in Ezio by Gaetano Latilla (Naples, 1758)
• Sammete in Nitteti by Johann Adolph Hasse (Florence, 1758)
• Timante in Demofoonte by Johann Adolph Hasse (Naples, 1758)
• Unknown role in Siroe, re di Persia by Pasquale Errichelli (Naples, 1758)
• Sesto in La clemenza di Tito by Johann Adolph Hasse (Naples, 1759)
• Sesto in La clemenza di Tito by Johann Adolph Hasse (Siena, 1759)
• Pirro in Cajo Fabricio by Gian Francesco de Majo (Naples, 1760)
• Tiridate in Zenobia by Nicola Sala (Naples, 1761)
• Oreste in Andromaca by Antonio Sacchini (Naples, 1761)
• Cesare in Catone in Utica by Johann Christian Bach (Naples, 1761)
• Linceo in Ipermestra by Pasquale Cafaro (Naples, 1761)
• Poro in Alessandro nell’Indie by Johann Christian Bach (Naples, 1762)
• Timante in the pasticcio Demofoonte (Florence, 1762)
• Poro in Alessandro nell’Indie by Gian Gualberto Brunetti (Pisa, 1763)
• Megacle in L'Olimpiade by Baldassare Galuppi (Siena, 1763)
• Sesostri in the pasticcio Sesostri, re d’Egitto (Florence, 1764)
• Eumene in the pasticcio Eumene (Florence, 1764)
• Siveno in the anonymous L’eroe cinese (Parma, 1764)
• Eumene in Eumene by Antonio Sacchini (Rome, 1765)
• Farnace in Farnace by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi (Rome, 1765)
• Farnace in Farnace by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi (Palermo, 1765)
• Sesostri in the pasticcio Sesostri, re d’Egitto (Palermo, 1766)
• Eumene in Artemisia by Antonio Sacchini (Florence, 1766)
• Zamarne in the pasticcio Trackebarne gran Mogol (London, 1767)
• Ezio in the anonymous Ezio (London, 1767)
• Carattaco in Carattaco by Johann Christian Bach (London, 1767)
• Sifare in Sifare by Carl Friedrich Abel (London, 1767)
• Montezuma in La conquista del Messico by Mattia Vento (London, 1767)
• Tigrane in the pasticcio Tigrane (London, 1767)
• Achille in Ifigenia in Aulide by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi (London, 1768)
• Sesostri in Sesostri by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi (London, 1768)
• Rodrigo in Il Cidde by Antonio Sacchini (Rome, 1769)
• Sesto in La clemenza di Tito by Pasquale Anfossi (Rome, 1769)
• Farnaspe in the pasticcio Adriano in Siria (Genoa, 1769)
• Enea in Didone abbandonata by Niccolò Piccinni (Rome, 1770)
• Siroe in Siroe by Carlo Franchi (Rome, 1770)
• Sammete in La Nitteti by Josef Mysliveček (Bologna, 1770)
• Rinaldo in Armida by Vincenzo Manfredini (Bologna, 1770)
• Alessandro in La disfatta di Dario by Giovanni Paisiello (Florence, 1776)
• Farnaspe in Adriano in Siria by Josef Mysliveček (Florence, 1776)
• Farnaspe in Adriano in Siria by Josef Mysliveček (Perugia, 1777)
• Rodrigo in Il Cidde by Antonio Sacchini (Perugia, 1777)

Bibliography

Carnevale, Nadia. “Guarducci, Tommaso”, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani [DBI], vol. 60, Rome 2003, pp. 313–15.