Michael Kelly (tenor)
Michael Kelly (25 December[1] 1762 – 9 October 1826) was an Irish tenor, composer and theatrical manager who made an international career of importance in musical history.
[2] One of the leading figures in British musical theatre around the turn of the nineteenth century, he was a close associate of playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
'[5] Michael Kelly's father Thomas, a Roman Catholic wine merchant and dancing-master, held an important social position as Master of Ceremonies at Dublin Castle, the seat of British government in Ireland.
[6] Michael was given a serious musical education (mainly voice and keyboard) from a young age, his first teachers being the Italians Passerini (of Bologna) and Niccolò Peretti, a male contralto, who sang at Covent Garden in the original productions of Thomas Arne's opera (on a Metastasio text) Artaxerxes (title role).
[12] Among them was the male soprano Venanzio Rauzzini (1746–1810), friend of Haydn and Charles Burney who, after a period at Vienna and Munich, settled in England c.1774 and was the teacher of the young Nancy Storace.
[13] While in Dublin in 1778, he took Michael Kelly under his wing, gave him lessons and taught him several songs, including his own "Fuggiamo di questo loco" (which Linley introduced into The Duenna with words by Sheridan as "By him we love offended").
Savoy, who was to have sung the high soprano role of the Count in Piccinni's La buona figliuola, was ill, and Kelly (who still sang treble) was brought in and made a great success.
[15] In May 1779, Kelly travelled to Naples where, as protégé of Sir William Hamilton,[16] he enrolled with Fenaroli at the 1537 Conservatorio Santa Maria di Loreto, with privileges.
[20] Kelly went first to Gaeta, where he sang a salve regina under Aprile, who continued to give him daily lessons and dinners: then to Palermo, where he studied several hours a day as his voice dropped to a tenor.
He wrote letters of introduction to Andrea Campigli, impresario of the Florence Teatro La Pergola, and obtained Kelly's place on a ship for Livorno.
Stephen Storace helped him mount a concert, and with funds he went on to Pisa, met the tenor Giuseppe Viganoni (1754-1823),[26] appeared at the theatre with soprano Clementina Baglioni,[27] and dined with the violinist Soderini.
[28] At Florence, Campigli gave him a spring season as first comic tenor at the Teatro Nuovo, and at Lord Cowper's house he heard Pietro Nardini play Tartini's sonata.
He made a successful debut in Il francese in Italia, coached by the actor-tenor Filippo Laschi[29]), opposite the charming Signora Lortinella (called "Ortabella"), and Andrea Morigi as primo buffo.
[32] After the Florence contract Campigli offered him six months as primo tenore in Venice, and he travelled via Bologna making many musical acquaintances, but found the project had collapsed.
[36] He returned to Venice for Easter and was recruited for a Brescia production of Cimarosa's Il pittor parigino [it], which he rehearsed and began performing with Ortabella, but the jealous sponsor-manager became murderous, and Kelly escaped to Verona, slipping out of the theatre in mid-performance.
[38] She invited Kelly to sing with her in Anfossi's new oratorio, and her consort Count Vidiman engaged him for four months, sending him first to Parma and Colorno to present himself to the Archduchess, for whom he sang and played billiards for a week.
After she lost her voice for a time he sang in three operas with Mmes Cortellini, Antonia Bernasconi and Laschi, and won applause humorously modelling a character on the mannerisms of da Ponte in performances witnessed by that writer.
[51] Yet he remained until February 1787 at Vienna, appearing in Paisiello's La frascatana nobile [ca],[52] before setting off with Nancy and Stephen Storace and their mother, and Thomas Attwood, all together in a carriage for England.
[53] In London, Kelly and Stephen Storace met at once with Thomas Linley and his daughters (Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell), and saw John Kemble and Mrs Crouch in Richard Coeur de Lion.
[55] He was then Young Meadows in Arne's Love in a Village, adding a Glück song in English, and next appeared at Theatre Royal opposite Mrs Crouch, who was his stage partner for many years.
'[58] Then the pair led at York in these works, for Tate Wilkinson, also giving Arnold's Maid of the Mill and Sheridan's The Duenna at Leeds, and Love in a Village there and at Wakefield.
[63] In August 1790, he spent some weeks with Mr and Mrs Crouch in Paris, seeing Grétry's La Caravane and Raoul Barbe-bleu, which they were to perform in English versions.
[64] They began 1791 at Drury Lane with Stephen Storace's The Siege of Belgrade (incorporating a Martini scena), and his version of Salieri's Cave of Trofonio (Prince Hoare text) was given.
