Marc'Antonio Pasqualini

Andrea Sacchi : Marcantonio Pasqualini crowned by Apollo . (1641)

Simone Cantarini : Portrait of Pasqualini's Friend Antonio Barberini (ca.1629)

Marc'Antonio Pasqualini (signature: MAP ; born April 25, 1614 in Rome ; died July 2, 1691 in Rome) was an Italian composer of the baroque and castrato and was considered one of the leading male sopranos of his time.

Life

Pasqualini was the son of a barber and in 1623 was accepted as a singer in the choir of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi under Vincenzo Ugolini . Under the patronage of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, he became a member of the Sistine Chapel Choir in 1630 , but also sang as a protagonist in operas a. a. by Stefano Landi , Marco Marazzoli and Virgilio Mazzocchi , the performances of which were organized by members of the Barberini family in the Palazzo Barberini and the Teatro delle Quattro Fontane . Pope Urban VIII was among his supporters .

Pasqualini had a homosexual relationship with Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1607–1671), who was seven years his senior , who passed on to him his not only musical obsession with the singer Leonora Baroni , whom he had married to his private secretary Castellani in 1640. Even Stendhal reported in the 19th century in his Chroniques Italiennes it. In Carnival 1642 the opera performance of Luigi Rossi's Il palazzo d'Atlante incantato with Pasqualini as soprano ended in a disaster of the stage machinery designed by Andrea Sacchi , the theater scandal was intensified by public insults with which it was denounced to the Pope by a companion of the French ambassador has been. Nonetheless, Barberini continued to support him.

At the invitation of Cardinal Jules Mazarin , he sang the role of Aristeo in Luigi Rossi's Orfeo in Paris in 1647 , while the considerably younger castrato Atto Melani had the title role here. From then on, Pasqualini withdrew to singing in the Sistina choir, which he led from 1655 and from which he finally said goodbye in 1659 in order to live on a papal pension for the next thirty years. Pasqualini signed his compositions and arrangements with "MAP".

The contemporaries André Maugar and Atto Melani wrote about him in praise, Claudio Monteverdi had already registered the young singer in 1628 and described his voice as “ qualche gorgietta e qualche trillo, ma il tutto pronunciato con una certa voce alquanto ottussa ” (German: “... coloratura here and trills there, but the whole thing produced in a sure and somehow muffled voice ”). After his Grand Tour, the Englishman John Evelyn recommended Pasqualini to his compatriots as the best soprano on the continent.

novel

Helmut Krausser made Pasqualini one of the protagonists of his novel Melodies or Additions to the Mercury Age (1993), which is based on what has been historically guaranteed, but mainly uses poetic freedom.

Works

More than 250 arias and cantatas. A selection in: The Art of the Castrati. Luigi Rossi; Marc 'Antonio Pasqualini; Attilio Melani; Alessandro Melani et al. MusiContact, Heidelberg 1990, DNB 35236274X .
Margaret Murata: Cantatas by Marc'Antonio Pasqualini (= Italian Cantata in the Seventeeth Century. Vol. 3). Garland, New York NY et al. 1985, ISBN 0-8240-8877-8 .

literature

Pasqualini, Marc'Antonio. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Volume 14: Osaka - Player piano. Macmillan, London 1980.
Stefan Brandt: Pasqualini, Marc'Antonio. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 13 (Paladilhe - Ribera). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1133-0 , Sp. 167–168 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
Georges Dethan: Mazarin et ses amis, étude sur la jeunesse du cardinal, suivie d'un choix de lettres inédites . Berger-Levrault, Paris 1968, OCLC 264899909 .

Web links

Marcantonio Pasqualini (1614–1691) Crowned by Apollo at metmuseum (en)

Individual evidence

↑ Georges Dethan: The Young Mazarin. Thames and Hudson, London 1977, OCLC 878082988 , pp. 63 f. Also with Roger Freitas: The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato. In: The Journal of Musicology. Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring 2003, ISSN 0277-9269 , pp. 196-249, here pp. 215 f., Doi: 10.1525 / jm.2003.20.2.196 , who refers to Dethan.
↑ Georges Dethan: The Young Mazarin. Thames and Hudson, London 1977, OCLC 878082988 , pp. 64 f.
^ Helmut Krausser: Melodies or additions to the age of mercury. List, Munich et al. 1993, ISBN 3-471-77988-4 . New version: DuMont, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-8321-6291-7 .

personal data
SURNAME	Pasqualini, Marc'Antonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	MAP
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian singer, castrato and composer
DATE OF BIRTH	April 25, 1614
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rome
DATE OF DEATH	July 2, 1691
Place of death	Rome

[1] Georges Dethan: The Young Mazarin. Thames and Hudson, London 1977, OCLC 878082988 , pp. 63 f. Also with Roger Freitas: The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato. In: The Journal of Musicology. Vol. 20, No. 2, Spring 2003, ISSN 0277-9269 , pp. 196-249, here pp. 215 f., Doi: 10.1525 / jm.2003.20.2.196 , who refers to Dethan.

[2] Georges Dethan: The Young Mazarin. Thames and Hudson, London 1977, OCLC 878082988 , pp. 64 f.

[3] Helmut Krausser: Melodies or additions to the age of mercury. List, Munich et al. 1993, ISBN 3-471-77988-4 . New version: DuMont, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-8321-6291-7 .