Nancy Storace
Encyclopedia
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...
tic soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
. The role of Susanna in Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's Le nozze di Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
was written for and first performed by her.
Career
Nancy Storace was born in LondonLondon
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...
, the daughter of an Italian double-bass player Stefano Storace who had emigrated in the 1740s and Elizabeth Trusler, the daughter of the proprietor of Marylebone Gardens
Marylebone Gardens
Marylebone or Marybone Gardens was a London pleasure garden sited in the grounds of the old manor house of Marylebone and frequented from the mid-17th century, when Marylebone was a village separated from London by fields and market gardens, to the third quarter of the 18th century...
.
She studied in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
under Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Sacchini was an Italian opera composer.Sacchini was born in Florence, but was raised in Naples, where he received his musical education at the San Onofrio conservatory. He wrote his first operas in Naples, thereafter moving to Venice, then London and eventually Paris, where...
. Storace became a member of the Court opera in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
where she notably sang in two world premieres in 1786, Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Angelica in Vicente Martín y Soler
Vicente Martín y Soler
Vicente Martín y Soler was a Spanish composer of opera and ballet. Although relatively obscure today, in his own day he was compared favorably with his contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa. He has been called the Valencian Mozart.He was born in Valencia and studied...
's Il burbero di buon cuore
Il burbero di buon cuore
Il burbero di buon cuore is a dramma giocoso or opera in two acts by Vicente Martín y Soler. The Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte is based on the French comedy by Carlo Goldoni...
. Soon afterward she returned to England and first appeared at the King's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
in London in 1787. She contributed greatly to the success of her brother Stephen Storace
Stephen Storace
Stephen Storace was an English composer. His sister was the famous opera singer Nancy Storace. He was born in London in the Parish of St Marylebone to an English mother and Italian father...
's operas, including The Haunted Tower, and she also appeared at the Handel Commemoration
Handel Commemoration
The Handel festival or ‘Commemoration’ took place in Westminster Abbey in 1784, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel in 1759....
in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
in 1791. She retired from the stage in 1808, and died on 24 August 1817.
Friendships and love life
While in Italy, Storace met the Irish singer Michael Kelly, who mentions her frequently in his Reminiscences. On 29 March 1784 she married John Abraham Fisher, an English violinist and composer many years her senior; however his violent behaviour towards her meant that they soon separated.When she was about to leave Vienna, Mozart wrote the concert recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
and aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
"Ch'io mi scordi di te?
Ch'io mi scordi di te?
Ch'io mi scordi di te? ... Non temer, amato bene, K. 505, is a concert aria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for soprano, piano obbligato and orchestra, composed 1786 in Vienna; it is often considered to be one of his greatest compositions in this genre.-History:...
[...] Non temer, amato bene" for her. The work, which is headed "Recitativo con Rondò. Composto per la Sigra: storace / dal suo servo ed amico W: A: Mozart. / viena li 26 / di decbr: 786", is a duet for soprano and piano with orchestra which, in view of Mozart's note in his own thematic catalogue ("Scena con Rondò mit klavierSolo. für Mad:selle storace und mich."), was very likely performed by her, with Mozart himself playing the piano part, at her farewell concert on Friday, the 23rd of February 1787. Earlier Mozart had collaborated with Antonio Salieri
Antonio Salieri
Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....
(in whose operas Storace also performed) and an unknown composer Cornetti on a short cantata "Per la ricuperata di Ophelia", celebrating her return to the stage after an illness of several months, although this cantata is now lost.
Storace was also a friend of Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
. She sang in his oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia in March 1784, and he later wrote a cantata "for the voice of my dear Storace", thought to be Miseri noi, H. XXIVa:.
In around 1794 Storace began a long liaison with the tenor John Braham
John Braham
John Braham was a tenor opera singer born in London, England. His long career led him to become one of Europe's leading opera stars. He also wrote a number of songs, of minor importance, although The Death of Nelson is still remembered...
, though they never married. Their breakup in 1815 was acrimonious and may have contributed to Storace's sudden death the following year; at any rate their son, William Spencer Harris Braham, certainly believed it had. Spencer, who had become an Anglican clergyman and a minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
, years later sought and obtained leave from Queen Victoria to change his family's name to Meadowes, his petition having been received on the ground that his wife was the sole heir of her maternal grandfather of that name. In his mother's will —bequeathing property to the amount of £50,000— she styled herself a "spinster", though legally speaking she died a widow, predeceasing her widowed mother.