Description
The many texts dedicated to virtuoso singers in the course of the 18th century, if one disregards the particular
celebratory frills, represent an exceptional fount of information, showing the measure of the success of the women
at the opera and their position in the eyes of cultivated audiences of the time. There can be no doubt that
one of the elements that caused these women to be seen as exceptional was their ability to travel, essential for
the singing profession in professional theatres, and the perception that they had a greater liberty, often associated
in the masculine imagination with laxness of morals. Sometimes assisted by their husbands for the economic
management of their own careers, the private lives of the women of the opera were the object of comments
and criticisms. When in 1730 the famous Faustina Bordoni married the Saxon composer Johann Adolf Hasse,
various Venetian satires called his choice to count.