Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Pasta (; 26 October 1797 – 1 April 1865) was an Italian opera singer. A soprano, she has been compared to the 20th-century soprano
Maria Callas.
Career
Early career
Pasta was born Giuditta Angiola Maria Costanza Negri in
Saronno
Saronno (; ) is a ''comune'' of Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Varese. It received the honorary title of city with a presidential decree in 1960. With an estimated population of inhabitants, it is the most densely populated among the big m ...
, near Milan, on 26 October 1797.
[Stern (n.d.)] She was born of the Negri family, who came from
Lomazzo, where the family practiced medical art. Her father, Carlo Antonio Negri or Schwarz, was
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
and a soldier in the
Napoleonic Army. She studied in Milan with Giuseppe Scappa and Davide Banderali, and later with
Girolamo Crescentini and
Ferdinando Paer
Ferdinando Paer (1 June 1771 – 3 May 1839) was an Italian composer known for his operas. He was of Austrian descent and used the German spelling Pär in application for printing in Venice, and later in France the spelling Paër.
Life
He was bor ...
among others. In 1816, she married fellow singer Giuseppe Pasta and took his surname as her own. She made her professional opera début in the world première of Scappa's ''Le tre Eleonore'' in Milan that same year. Later that year she performed at the
Théâtre Italien in Paris as Donna Elvira in ''
Don Giovanni
''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; full title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legen ...
'', Giulietta in
Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli's ''
Giulietta e Romeo'', and in two operas by Paer.
[
Pasta's first appearance in ]London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
in 1817 was a failure. Further studies with Scappa were followed by a successful debut in Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
in 1819. She caused a sensation in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
in 1821–22, in the role of Desdemona in Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote man ...
's opera ''Otello
''Otello'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's play ''Othello''. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the La Scala, Teatro alla Scala, M ...
''.[
]
Roles written specifically for Pasta
She sang regularly in London, Paris, Milan and Naples between 1824 and 1837. In Milan she created three roles which were written for her voice. They were the title role of Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian Romantic composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the ''bel canto'' opera ...
's '' Anna Bolena'' given at the Teatro Carcano in 1830 (which was that composer's greatest success at that time), the Amina in Bellini's '' La sonnambula'' and the protagonist's part of his ''Norma Norma may refer to:
* Norma (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
** Norma Lizbeth Ramos, a Mexican bullying victim
Astronomy
*Norma (constellation)
* 555 Norma, a minor asteroid
* Cygnus Arm or Norma Arm, a spiral ...
'' (both in 1831), which became three of her major successes. Stendhal had argued persuasively in 1824 for the necessity of a score composed expressly for Pasta.
Later career
Pasta retired from the stage in 1835 and performed only infrequently after that date (including performances in London in 1837 and in Germany and Russia in 1840–1841.)
Pasta later taught singing in Italy. Among her notable pupils were contralto Emma Albertazzi and soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini and the English soprano Adelaide Kemble. Another pupil was Carolina Ferni, herself a noted Norma, who in her turn taught the soprano Eugenia Burzio whose recordings are known for their passionate expression.
Pasta died in Blevio, a town in the province of Como
Como (, ; , or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Nestled at the southwestern branch of the picturesque Lake Como, the city is a renowned tourist destination, ce ...
on 1 April 1865, at the age of 67.
Pasta's voice
Giuditta Pasta's voice was described by a '' New Monthly Magazine'' reviewer in 1824 as follows:
:It is a mezzo-soprano, somewhat similar to that of Madame Vestris, but clearer, more powerful, and of greater compass. She commands two octaves, but two or three of the highest notes of this range are forced, and not agreeable. Her middle tones are fine and full-bodied; but, occasionally, notes escape in the lowest half octave, which are husky and harsh. In point of cultivation and science, she possesses, first of all, the rare merit of a pure intonation. We have not heard her once out of tune.
Her voice type was what could be called a soprano sfogato. It was described by Stendhal as follows:
:She can achieve perfect resonance on a note as low as bottom A, and can rise as high as C, or even to a slightly sharpened D; and she possesses the rare ability to be able to sing contralto as easily as she can sing soprano. I would suggest ... that the true designation of her voice is mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano (, ), or mezzo ( ), is a type of classical music, classical female singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A bel ...
, and any composer who writes for her should use the mezzo-soprano range for the thematic material of his music, while still exploiting, as it were incidentally and from time to time, notes which lie within the more peripheral areas of this remarkably rich voice. Many notes of this last category are not only extremely fine in themselves, but have the ability to produce a kind of resonant and magnetic vibration, which, through some still unexplained combination of physical phenomena, exercises an instantaneous and hypnotic effect upon the soul of the spectator.
:This leads to the consideration of one of the most uncommon features of Madame Pasta's voice: it is not all moulded from the same metallo, as it is said in Italy (which is to say that it possesses more than one timbre); and this fundamental variety of tone produced by a single voice affords one of the richest veins of musical expression which the artistry of a great cantatrice is able to exploit.
In 1829 named ''cantante delle passioni'' by Carlo Ritorni, one of the most erudite critics of the period, he described her as such because her voice was directed "towards expressing the most intense passions, accompanying it with expressions of physical action, unknown before her in the lyric theatre".
In modern times Susan Rutherford has made a specific comparison with Callas:
: For the impact of corporeality on vocal timbre and delivery, and in the absence of Pasta's own explanations of its effect, we might turn to another distinctive ''attrice cantante'' (and one who sang much of Pasta's repertory) from a quite different period, Maria Callas. She also argued that gesture and facial expression must precede word in order to create the appropriate vehicle.
:It isn't merely fame that makes Pasta interesting:... Pasta's singularity is measured rather by the tone and extent of the debates her celebrity provoked, by her influence on the operatic stage, and by the timing of her career at the transition from Rossinian opera to the works of Bellini and Donizetti (with all the stylistic ramifications this implied). No other singer during that period attracted as much intellectual discussion, or was regarded as of such significance in the articulation of theories around operatic practices. For such reasons alone, Pasta is deserving of critical attention.[Rutherford 2007, p. 108]
References
Sources
* Conway, David (2012). ''Jewry in Music''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*
* Pleasants, Henry (1981), ''The Great Singers'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 2nd ed.
*Rutherford, Susan (2007)
"''La cantante delle passioni'': Giuditta Pasta and the Idea of Operatic Performance"
''Cambridge Opera Journal'', Vol. 19, No. 2, July on jstor.org
*Stern, Kenneth (n.d.
"Pasta, Giuditta."
Oxford Music Online
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and th ...
; accessed 2 July 2017
Further reading
*Appolonia, Giorgio (2000), ''Giuditta Pasta – Glory of Belcanto''. Turin: EDA.
*Stern, Kenneth, ''Giuditta Pasta: A Life on the Lyric Stage'', Operaphile Press, 2011.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pasta, Giuditta
1797 births
1865 deaths
Italian operatic sopranos
19th-century Italian women opera singers
People from Saronno
Chamber singers of the Emperor of Austria
Women singers from the Austrian Empire