Anna Renzi

Anna Renzi (c. 1620 – after 1661) is often called the first diva of opera, an Italian soprano praised as much for her acting as for her voice. She was born in Rome and first performed in 1640 at the French ambassador’s Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, with Cardinal Richelieu in the audience, playing Lucinda in *Il favorito del principe* (music lost) by Ottaviano Castelli and the young composer Filiberto Laurenzi. Laurenzi later served as her teacher and accompanist. By the 1640s, she was a major star in Vienna. Her Venetian debut in 1641 was sensational: she sang the title role of Deidamia in *La finta pazza* (The Feigned Madwoman) by Giulio Strozzi and Francesco Sacrati, an opera that opened the Teatro Novissimo with sets by the famed designer Giacomo Torelli. The next year, she created the role of Archimene (likely also playing Venere) in *Il Bellerofonte* (music lost) by Vincenzo Nolfi and Sacrati at the same theater. Also in 1642, the composer Orazio Tarditi dedicated a collection of canzonette to her, confirming her fame. In 1643, she took on two roles at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo: the title part of Aretusa in *La finta savia* (The Feigned Wise-Woman; music survives in excerpts) by Strozzi and Laurenzi, and Ottavia in Claudio Monteverdi’s *L’incoronazione di Poppea* (by Giovanni Francesco Busenello). She likely also originated the roles of La Virtù and Drusilla in that same opera. Returning to the Novissimo in 1644, she sang the title role in *La Deidamia* (music lost) by Scipione Herrico (possibly with music by Laurenzi). That year, Strozzi edited *Le glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana*, a collection of encomiums that vividly describes her performance style and effect on audiences. In 1645, she performed in *Ercole in Lidia* (music lost) by Maiolino Bisaccioni and Giovanni Rovetta, probably as Giunone and Fillide. A marriage contract was drawn up that year between Renzi and Roman violinist Roberto Sabbatini, but there is no evidence the wedding took place. After the Novissimo closed, Renzi—now the most celebrated and highest-paid singer of her time—moved to the Santi Giovanni e Paolo. She likely sang in a revival of *Poppea* there in 1646. In 1648, she created the title role (probably doubling as a Villanella) in *La Torilda* (music lost) by Pietro Paolo Bissari (possibly with music by Francesco Cavalli). The following year, she apparently originated the title role in *Argiope* (music lost) by Giovanni Battista Fusconi and Alessandro Leardini. In 1650, she sang in *La Deidamia* in Florence. Two years later, she may have created Cleopatra (probably doubling as Venere in the prologue) in *Il Cesare amante* (music lost) by Dario Varotari the Younger and Antonio Cesti at the Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In 1653, she seems to have performed in *La Torilda* and *Il Cesare amante* in Genoa. The next year, she sang in a revival of the latter opera (retitled *La Cleopatra*, possibly in her honor) at the court theater in Innsbruck. Returning to Venice in 1655, she apparently created the title role (probably doubling as Giunone) in *L’Eupatra* (music lost) by Giovanni Faustini and Pietro Andrea Ziani at the Teatro Sant’Apollinare. Later that year, she created the role of Dorisbe in *L’Argia* by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni and Cesti in Innsbruck, an opera commissioned by Archduke Ferdinand Charles of Austria to celebrate Queen Christina of Sweden’s conversion to Catholicism; Christina was greatly pleased with Renzi’s performance. In 1657, she bid farewell to the stage as Damira (probably doubling as Giunone in the prologue) in *Le fortune di Rodope e Damira* by Aurelio Aureli and Ziani at the Sant’Apollinare. The last known mention of her dates from 1660. Composers exploited the full range of Renzi’s voice, from middle C to high B-flat. The four surviving non-Monteverdian roles written for her (by Sacrati, Laurenzi, Cesti, and Ziani) are marked by strong dramatic, emotional, and stylistic contrasts, likely designed to showcase her exceptional vocal and expressive control. Most of her thirteen leading roles—probably all written with her gifts in mind—feature violent shifts between comic and tragic scenes and moods. They often involve disguises (in *La Deidamia*, a lamenting princess poses as a charming youth; in *Argiope*, *L’Eupatra*, and *Le fortune di Rodope e Damira*, a scheming princess or queen pretends to be an innocent shepherdess) or other forms of deceit, such as feigned simplicity (*Il favorito del principe* and *Il Bellerofonte*), feigned madness (*La finta pazza*, *L’Eupatra*, and *Le fortune di Rodope e Damira*), feigned piety (*La finta savia*), or feigned amorousness (*L’Argia*). Scholar Schneider argues that Renzi could hardly have been satisfied with only the role of Ottavia in *Poppea*, which is half the length of her other roles, lacks comedy, is dramatically and emotionally uniform, is set purely in recitative, and primarily uses her lower range; he suggests that Ottavia and Drusilla may have been written as a virtuoso quick-change part. Strozzi described her art in 1644: “The action that gives soul, spirit, and existence to things must be governed by the movements of the body, by gestures, by the face and by the voice, now raising it, now lowering it, becoming enraged and immediately becoming calm again; at times speaking hurriedly, at others slowly, moving the body now in one, now in another direction, drawing in the arms, and extending them, laughing and crying, now with little, now with much agitation of the hands.