Antonio Montagnana
Encyclopedia
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, whose opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s Montagnana sang in.
Montagnana's first known appearance is in 1730 at Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, and 1731 he sang at Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
in operatic works by Nicola Porpora
Nicola Porpora
Nicola Porpora was an Italian composer of Baroque operas and teacher of singing, whose most famous singing student was the castrato Farinelli. One of his other students was composer Matteo Capranica.-Biography:Porpora was born in Naples...
, thought to be his teacher: Porpora also instructed the famous castrato
Castrato
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
Farinelli
Farinelli
Farinelli , was the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.- Early years :...
. During that same year he came to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to join Handel's opera company, where he created roles in Handel's Ezio - with words by the renowned librettist Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
- and Sosarme
Sosarme
Sosarme, re di Media is an opera by George Frideric Handel written for the Royal Academy of Music . The text was based on an earlier libretto by Antonio Salvi, Dionisio, Re di Portogallo , and adapted by an unknown writer. Composed in 1732, the original setting of Portugal was changed to Sardis in...
, and sang in revivals of Admeto
Admeto
Admeto, re di Tessaglia is a three-act opera written for the Royal Academy of Music with music composed by George Frideric Handel to an Italian-language libretto prepared by Nicola Haym. The story is partly based on Euripedes' Alcestis. The opera's first performance was at the Haymarket Theatre...
, Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...
, Flavio
Flavio
Flavio, re de' Longobardi is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Matteo Noris's Il Flavio Cuniberto. It was Handel's fourth full-length opera for the Royal Academy of Music...
, and Poro
Poro
The Poro, or Purrah or Purroh, is a secret society of Sierra Leone and Liberia.-Structure:Only males are admitted to its ranks, but two other affiliated and secret associations exist, the Yassi and the Bundu, the first of which is nominally reserved for females, but members of the Poro are admitted...
. During the following season he created the role of Zoroastro in Handel's Orlando
Orlando (opera)
Orlando is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the Royal Academy of Music . The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's L'Orlando after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was also the source of Handel's operas Alcina and...
and sang the roles of Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea and Haman in Esther
Esther (oratorio)
Esther is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel and is generally acknowledged to be the first English oratorio. Handel set a libretto by John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope after the Old Testament drama by Jean Racine. It is a short work compared to Handel's later oratorios...
in what was Handel's first season of oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
: he also took part in revivals of Tolomeo
Tolomeo
Tolomeo, re d'Egitto is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's Tolomeo et Alessandro.-Performance history:...
and Alessandro
Alessandro (opera)
Alessandro is an opera written for the Royal Academy of Music composed by George Frideric Handel in 1726. Paolo Rolli was the librettist and based the story on Ortensio Mauro's La superbia d'Alessandro...
. The part of Abner in Handel's Athalia
Athalia (oratorio)
Athalia is an English-language oratorio by George Frideric Handel, his third in this genre. The structural and rhetorical achievements in Athalia project a dramatic concept that may be unique in Handel's output. Commissioned in 1733 for the Publick Act in Oxford, a commencement ceremony of the...
was composed for his voice, as were the roles of the Chief Priest of Israel and Abinoam in Deborah. In 1733, however, he deserted Handel for his rival company, the Opera of the Nobility
Opera of the Nobility
The Opera of the Nobility was an opera company set up and funded in 1733 by a group of nobles opposed to George II of England, in order to rival the Second Royal Academy of Music company under Handel .Nicola Porpora was invited to be its musical director and Owen Swiny considered as its talent scout...
, possibly breaking a legal contract in order to do so. In this he imitated the actions of his fellow singers Senesino
Senesino
Senesino was a celebrated Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel.-Early life and career:...
and Francesca Bertolli
Francesca Bertolli
Francesca Bertolli was an Italian contralto of the 18th century. She is best remembered for her association with the composer George Frideric Handel, in whose operas she sang....
.
For the Nobility, the operas he sang in included those by Porpora, Johann Adolf Hasse, Giovanni Bononcini, and even one Handel opera, Ottone
Ottone
Ottone, re di Germania is an opera by George Frideric Handel, to an Italian–language libretto adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym from the libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino for Antonio Lotti's opera Teofane. It was the first new opera written for the Royal Academy of Music 's fourth season...
. In 1740 he moved to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
for 10 years, where he sang in many operas and many cantatas at the royal chapel.
For much of the 1730s Montagnana was widely acclaimed as a remarkable singer. The parts written for him at this time display a command of a low tessitura
Tessitura
In music, the term tessitura generally describes the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or, less frequently, musical instrument; the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre...
and a vocal range of more than 2 octaves, though by 1738 - when he sang in Handel's Serse
Serse
Serse is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was first performed in London on 15 April 1738. The Italian libretto was adapted by an unknown hand from that by Silvio Stampiglia for an earlier opera of the same name by Giovanni Bononcini in 1694...
- his range had become more limited. 18th-century music historian Charles Burney
Charles Burney
Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...
praised his "depth, power, mellowness and peculiar accuracy of intonation in hitting distant intervals".