Lucrezia Aguiari

She possessed an unusually agile voice with a large vocal range that spanned slightly more than three and a half octaves; faculties that enabled her to perform the most difficult passage work.

In a letter dated 24 March 1770 Leopold Mozart wrote of hearing her perform a C an octave above high C at the Ducal opera of Parma, "I could not believe that she was able to reach C soprano acuto, but my ears convinced me.

Another curiosity about the soprano was that she possessed a pronounced limp that was reportedly the result of a dog or hog eating part of her leg while she was an infant.

[1] Aguiari studied with Brizio Petrucci in Ferrara and then was further educated at a convent in Florence, where she received singing lessons from Abbé Lambertini.

[1] Fulvia in Ezio by Tommaso Traetta (Padua, 1765) Dircea in the pasticcio Demofoonte (Lucca, 1765) Beroe in La Nitteti by Brizio Petrucci (Mantua, 1766) Cleofide in the pasticcio Alessandro nell'Indie (Lucca, 1766) Cleopatra in Tigrane by Giuseppe Colla (Parma, 1767) Ipermestra in the anonymous Ipermestra (Parma, 1767) Tetide in Le nozze di Peleo e Tetide by Giovanni Paisiello (Naples, 1768) Arcinia and Bauci in Le feste d'Apollo by Christoph Willibald Gluck (Parma, 1769)[3] Berenice in Vologeso by Giuseppe Colla (Venice, 1770)[3] Andromeda in Andromeda by Giuseppe Colla (Turin, 1772) Zama in Tamas Kouli-Kan nell'Indie by Gaetano Pugnani (Turin, 1772) Argea in Argea by Felice Alessandri (Turin, 1773) Erasitea in Urano ed Erasitea by Giuseppe Colla (Parma, 1773) Cleonice in Demetrio by Josef Mysliveček (Pavia, 1773) Andromeda in Andromeda by Giovanni Paisiello (Milan, 1774) Cleopatra in Tolomeo by Giuesppe Colla (Milan, 1774) Aurora in Aurora by Gaetano Pampani (Turin, 1775) Andromeda in Andromeda by Giuseppe Colla (Florence, 1778) Didone in the pasticcio Didone abbandonata (Florence, 1778) Emirena in Adriano in Sira by Felice Alessandri (Venice, 1780) Cleonice in Demetrio by Francesco Bianchi (Venice, 1780) Cleopatra in the anonymous Tigrane (Genoa, 1782) Source: Claudio Sartori.