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Arias for Nancy Storace, Mozart's First Susanna.

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Arias for Nancy Storace, Mozart's First Susanna. Edited by Dorothea Link. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 66.) Middleton, WI.: A-R Editions, Inc., c2002. [Acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii-xvii; texts and trans., p. xviii-xxv; 3 plates; vocal score, 110 p.; crit. report, p. 111-22. ISBN 0-89579-516-7. $83.]

Ann Selina (Nancy) Storace (1765-1817) was a popular eighteenth-century opera star, often remembered as the soprano for whom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart created the role of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. Her father Stefano, a professional musician, nurtured her precocious vocal abilities by providing an excellent musical education--although he may have helped shorten her career by encouraging her to sing difficult arias in public before she reached maturity. As a child, Storace studied voice with the Italian castrato and composer Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810) in London and, at the age of eleven, sang a small role in one of his operas, L'ali d'amore. In 1778, she and her parents joined her brother Stephen in Italy, where she began building a successful operatic career; by 1782, at the age of seventeen, she had sung in most of the major opera houses in Italy and was firmly established as a star. In 1783, Emperor Joseph II initiated a new Italian opera company in Vienna and recruited several top Italian singers, including Nancy Storace. Her early vocal training, captivating personality, and dramatic skills inspired some of the major Italian opera composers of the day, including Mozart, Antonio...

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