Marietta Gazzaniga (born 1824 in Voghera, Kingdom of Lombardy-Venezia, now Italy, near Milan, died 1884 in Milan) was an Italian opera singer. She studied voice with composer and teacher Alberto Mazzucato and made her debut in Voghera in 1840 in the roles of Giovanna Seymour in Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Romeo in Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, both mezzo-soprano roles. She soon began singing dramatic soprano roles in various theaters in Italy, becoming especially associated with soprano roles in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. Between 1845 and 1848 she sang the leading soprano roles in Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco (Lucca, 1845), Attila and I due Foscari (Genoa, 1847), and I Lombardi and Nabucco (Naples, 1848).

In 1849, Gazzaniga married the Marquis Oberto de Malaspina, and she sang the title role in the premiere of Verdi’s Luisa Miller in Naples. In 1850 in Trieste, she premiered another Verdi opera, in a role written for her, as Lina in Stiffelio. She made her debut at La Scala in Milan in Verdi’s Gerusalemme in 1851. Gazzaniga also became known in the non-Verdi roles of Lucrezia in Lucrezia Borga and Paolina in Poliuto by Donizetti (Milan, 1851) and the title role of Norma by Bellini (Parma, 1852). In addition, she had a notable success in the title role of Saffo by Pacini (Naples, 1849), a role she would later perform in America.

Despite several acclaimed appearances throughout Italy, in 1853, following what was considered a disastrous performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto with Gazzaniga in the role of Gilda, Verdi rejected her for the premiere of La Traviata, claiming he had been dissatisfied with her in the premieres of Luisa Miller and Stiffelio. She nevertheless added Violetta in La Traviata to her repertoire, and after returning to Italy from a tour of Spain in 1855, sang twenty-six performances of the opera that year alone.

Gazzaniga was engaged for an American tour by opera impresario and conductor Max Maretzek, and she arrived in the United States in 1857. Her American debut was made at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia as Leonora in Il Trovatore, and her New York debut was in La Traviata that same year. In the winter of 1857, Gazzaniga performed in Havana, Cuba, and during the voyage there, the Marquis de Malaspina died of smallpox. Gazzaniga quickly developed an enthusiastic following among audiences in Havana, and returned there to perform in 1858. She continued to tour in the United States under the management of Jacob Grau, returning to Italy for performances in 1862 and 1863. In 1868, she married her second husband, Luciano Albites, a voice teacher.

In her last years in America, Gazzaniga began teaching, and gave fewer performances, although she started to add contralto roles to her repertoire, singing Azucena in Il Trovatore in 1871 and Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera for a benefit performance in 1876. She returned to Italy for the last time in 1879, and remained there until her death in 1884.

Sources:

Brown, Alston. A History of the New York Stage. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1903. Retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6864656_002/ldpd_6864656_002.pdf.

Dwight, John S, ed. Dwight’s Journal of Music. Vol. 13-14. Boston: Oliver Ditson and Company, 1859. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=f2QPAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-f2QPAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1.

Gottschalk, Louis Moreau. Notes of a Pianist: The Chronicles of a New Orleans Music Legend, 1st Princeton ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/QtApiA4qe-YC?hl=en&gbpv=1.

“Married.” The New York Times, April 17, 1868. https://www.nytimes.com/1868/04/17/archives/married.html?searchResultPosition=1.

“Marietta Gazzaniga: Death of a Songstress Whose Voice Has Long Been Silent.” The New York Times, January 4, 1884. https://www.nytimes.com/1884/01/04/archives/marietta-gazzaniga-death-of-a-song-stress-whose-voice-has-long-been.html.

Riggs, Geoffrey S. The Assoluta Voice in Opera, 1797-1847. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2003. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=GhXggJliLF8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Roselli, John. “Gazzaniga, Marietta.” In The Grove Book of Opera Singers, edited by Laura Macy, 183. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Grove_Book_of_Opera_Singers/N0zthpCZuAUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=marietta+gazzaniga&pg=PA572&printsec=frontcover.

Rutherford, Susan. Verdi, Opera, Women. Cambridge University Press, 2013. Retrieved from ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/newschool/detail.action?docID=1543591.

Staccioli, Roberto. “Gazzaniga, Marietta.” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Vol. 52 (1999). Accessed April 8, 2020. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/marietta-gazzaniga_(Dizionario-Biografico)/.