Nancy Storace
While in Monza (or shortly before in Milan) in 1782,[3] she was recruited to form part of Emperor Joseph II's new Italian opera company in Vienna, where the assembled singers who joined her "created in the two years leading up to the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, were welded into the finest buffa ensemble anywhere.
A sudden failure of her voice in 1785 caused her to withdraw from the stage for five months; though her career continued to be successful, she never fully recovered her former vocal prowess.
After marrying in 1784, she left Vienna in 1787 and returned to London, where she continued her career, notably singing in her brother Stephen Storace's operas.
The composer Giuseppe Sarti wrote his opera Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode (1782, Milan) specifically for her; it achieved great success.
Count Giacomo Durazzo, who was both an experienced former theatre director and the Emperor's ambassador,[12] engaged Michael Kelly, as he states in his Reminiscences.
[18] Storace would have worked closely with Mozart on The Marriage of Figaro, which premiered in Vienna on 1 May 1786; it is possible that her lively acting style was the inspiration for the central character of Susanna.
Author Piero Melograni [it], expanding on earlier claims of musicologist Alfred Einstein, suggested that Mozart and Storace may have had a love affair.
/ viena li 26 / di decbr: 786", is a duet for soprano and piano with orchestra which, in view of Mozart's note in his own thematic catalogue ("Scena con Rondò mit klavierSolo.
In 2011 the British composer Peter Seabourne was commissioned by Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie to write an orchestral work Tu Sospiri taking words from this concert aria as a starting point.
[20] On 1 June 1785,[21] Storace suffered a catastrophic failure of her voice during a performance of her brother's opera Gli sposi malcontenti ("The unhappily married couple").
The cantata was believed to be lost until its discovery in November 2015 by musicologist and composer Timo Jouko Herrmann while doing research on Salieri in the collections of the Czech Museum of Music.
[25] In fact, she hoped to return to Vienna for the 1788 Easter season, but the Emperor's opera budget would no longer permit it, as he had embarked on an expensive war with Turkey.
[26] She contributed greatly to the success of her brother Stephen Storace's operas, including The Haunted Tower and The Siege of Belgrade, and she also appeared at the Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey in 1791[25] and numerous concerts.
[37] Their break-up in 1815 was acrimonious and may have contributed to Storace's sudden death the following year; at any rate their son, William Spencer Harris Braham, certainly believed it had.
Spencer, who had become an Anglican clergyman and a minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral,[38] years later sought and obtained leave from Queen Victoria to change his family name to Meadows,[39] his petition having been received on the ground that his wife was the sole heir of her maternal grandfather of that name.
[40] Matthews (1969) writes: "Even after her great success in Vienna and her subsequent popularity on the English stage, her voice was said to have had a sort of twang, and it was her vivacity and gift for comedy which made her reputation."
