Giovanni Carlo Concialini

Giovanni Carlo Concialini (born June 23, 1742 in Siena , † October 25, 1812 in Muskau ) was an Italian opera singer ( soprano castrato ) at the Royal Opera in Berlin .

Concialini initially completed an apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Siena in order to be castrated at the age of twelve and trained in a singing school. It also seems certain that he made his debut as a singer on a Venetian stage. From 1761 he was on the stage of the Munich Royal Court and National Theater; In 1765 Friedrich II brought him to his (Italian) opera for an annual fee of 3,000 thalers. Due to recklessness, he retired early in 1796 and initially received a pension of 1,200 thalers, which, at the instigation of the Countess von Lichtenau, was reduced to initially 600 thalers a year and later 800 thalers. Since the beginning of the 1780s, Concialini had often stayed in Muskau as a guest of the Counts von Callenberg and von Pückler , where he also died in 1812 and - as a Catholic - was buried in the Protestant cemetery.

Concialini was one of the few for whom castration had the desired, or rather, the hoped-for success. He was not only one of the great singers of the 18th century, but also one of the more famous of the more than 4000 Freemasons who lived in Berlin from 1740 to 1806.

swell

• Birth certificate for Giovanni Carlo Concialini, issued December 12, 2014. Fondo archivistico Pieve di S. Giovanni Battezzati (Archives of the Parish of S. Giovanni Battezzati), register n ° 224. Archivio di Stato, Siena.
• "A Christian. Thanks ... for because. Mr. Johann Carl Conciallini, former first singer at the Königl. Prussia. Hofe ". Discontinuation book 1812. Archive of the Evangelical Church Community Bad Muskau.

literature

• Albert Emil Brachvogel: History of the Royal Theater in Berlin . According to the archives of the Royal. Go State Archives and the Royal. Theater. First volume: The old Berlin theater system. Berlin 1877.
• Bernd-Ingo Friedrich : Giovanni Carlo Concialini. A search for clues. In: CONCERTO. The magazine for early music. Edited by Alexander Reischert u. Johannes Jansen. Cologne - Altenburg: Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad and CONCERTO-Verlag. ISSN 0177-5944. No. 260 (March / April 2015) pp. 12-17. All primary and secondary sources (21) are listed there.
• Karlheinz Gerlach: The Freemasons in Old Prussia. 1738-1806. The boxes in Berlin . Innsbruck 2014. (Sources and representations on European Freemasonry, Vol. 10.)
• Daniela Sadgorski: Andrea Bernasconi and the opera at the Munich Kurfürstenhof 1753–1772 . (Diss.) Munich 2010.