Timms Lindgren Steff..

12 LOWELL LINDGREN AND COLIN TIMMS
Ha buon orecchio ancor per l'armonia, He has a good ear for harmony,
e uscendo dal teatro cantar suole and, when he leaves the opera house,
qualche ariettina, che ha portato via.65 sings to himself an arietta that he has heard.
To this we should add a postscript that praises Riva for saving all the letters sent to him, because they
reveal much-which we otherwise would not know-about the thoughts and works of Steffani,
Pallavicini and his many other correspondents.
Riva presumably met Steffani for the first time when he was in Hanover, in the retinue of King
George I, during the summer of 1719. He perhaps began his correspondence with Pallavicini at the
same time, because in his first extant letter to Riva the poet wonders whether the diplomat has
received the 'miscellany' ('miscee') that he sent him while he was in Hanover (see letter L, below,
dated 9 March 1720). From this letter and from Pallavacini's next five, we learn that Riva acted as a
London agent for the singers Berselli, Salvai and Senesino, all of whom joined the Royal Academy of
Music for its second season (1720-1).~~ He presumably played some role in the hiring of the
Modenese composer Bononcini (1670-1747), since they seem to have been good friends by 1714.~~
Riva's letters to Steffani demonstrate his unswerving devotion to Bononcini and headstrong opposition
to Handel (see nos. 1-2, etc., below). By February 1724 he and Bononcini lived and were often
seen together.68 The contralto Anastasia Robinson was one of their mutual friends and was very
closely tied to ~ononcini;~~ when she learned that Handel had written a distasteful role for her in
Ottone (which, as noted above, was based on Pallavicini's Teofane), she turned to Riva for advice.70
By January 1723, when Ottone was staged, all the Roman Catholics in London, including the
Italians, had fallen out of favour and under suspicion because of the Jacobite conspiracy. Riva
unhappily watched Haym replace his friend Rolli as librettist for the Academy, saw Bononcini's
annual commissions reduced to one opera, then to none, and presumably lost much of his previous
importance as a consultant to the cade ern^.^' He was, nevertheless, the negotiator for the projected
Academy visit to Paris during summer 1723.~~ As a result of its failure, he swore to abandon theatri-
65
Printed in Carlo Calcaterra, 'I1 capitol0 di Paolo Rolli a Giampietro Zanotti', Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 87
(1926), 108. For an overview of Riva's musical activities in London , see the article by Lowell Lindgren to be published in
the proceedings of the Handel conference held at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena, in November 2002.
66 TWO other singers also travelled from Dresden to London: Durastanti, who arrived in time for the first season (spring
1720), and Boschi, who had already sung in London during the 1710-1 1 season. Riva is not known to have been involved in
negotiations between them and the Academy.
67 They conceivably met in their home town, Modena, at various times between the 1690s and 1713, as well as at Vienna in
1712. Letters of 1714-16 sent to Riva by Giovanni Battista Primoli, secretary to the Viennese ambassador (Johann Wenzel)
in Rome, convey greetings from 'our [friend] Bononcini' ('nostro Sr Bononcini'), who sent Riva 'due cantate' and cordially
greeted him ('che cordialmente vi riverisce') in February 1716. Primoli also reported on Bononcini's teaching of singers and
on successful productions of his works. Primoli's letters are in I-MOe Fondo Campori, Y.Z.4.3; brief extracts are printed in
Lucchi, 'Carteggi di Giuseppe Riva', 69-71.
Our main source of information is the daily diary of the Florentine Antonio Cocchi, M.D. (who lived in London in
1723-6); extracts are published in Lowell Lindgren (trans. Sergio Durante), 'La carriera di Gaetano Berenstadt, contralto
evirato (ca. 1690-1735)', Rivista italiana di musicologia, 19 (1984), 61-2, and Lindgren, 'Zamboni', nos. 76a, 78a-c, 95a,
109a, 122a, 123a, 126a, 126b, 129a, 172b, 173 and 186a.
69 For example, they travelled as a 'duo' in France during the summer of 1723; see Lowell Lindgren, 'Parisian Patronage of
Performers from the Royal Academy of Music (1719-28)', Music & Letters, 58 (1977), 15-17, and idem, 'Zamboni', nos.
103 and 107.
70 TWO letters (undated, but written in autumn 1722) from her to Riva are extant in I-MOe Fondo Campori, Y.Z.4.4. The second
was intended for Haym and Handel, perhaps after Riva had revised it. Both are printed in Elizabeth Gibson, The
Royal Academy of Music (1 719-28): The Institution and Its Directors (New York, 1989), 169-71.
71 Lowell Lindgren, 'Vienna, the "natural centro" for Giovanni Bononcini', in Zl teatro musicale italiano nel Sacro Romano
Zmpero nei secoli XVZZ e XVZZZ, Atti del V11 convegno internazionale sulla musica italiana nei secoli XVII-XVIII. Loveno
di Menaggio (Como), 15-17 July 1997, ed. ~lbeho Colzani, Norbert Dubowy, Andrea Luppi and ~aurizio Padoan
(Como, 1999), 3824.
72
Lindgren, 'Parisian Patronage', 9-14.
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF AGOSTINO STEFFANI AND GIUSEPPE RIVA, 172G1728
cal affairs;73 but his oath was in vain, for music had long been the focus of his daily life and he continued
to be involved by others in operatic affairs. In summer 1724, for example, Anastasia Robinson
and her husband, Lord Peterborough, consulted him about the hiring of a Modenese tenor, Borosini,
who was then employed in ~ ienna.~~ When Steffani, who was in Padua, heard about this possible
engagement, he recommended instead an alto castrato who was living in Venice on a pension from
Empress Amalia (see no. 29, below). In 1725 Muratori wrote that Jacopo Martinenghi, a friend in
Piacenza, hoped to profit by sending one of hls librettos to the Royal Academy in London. In his
reply Riva revealed how much he disliked the librettos of Haym, which deformed texts ('difformarle')
according to the formula required in London, and how much he admired Bononcini and his librettos,
which were devised by students of the intellectual Roman poet Gra~ina.~' Two years later he boldly
published English and Italian editions of his brief Advice to the Composers and Performers of Vocal
Musick, which contained a veiled critique of Handel and an unmistakable attack on Faustina
Bordoni.
In 1726 Riva became a member of the new Academy of Vocal Music in London. He subsequently
wrote to Steffani about the Academy, asked him to send them scores of his music and informed him
of his election as president. Letters 42-50, below, reveal much about the Academy that would other-
wise be unknown, and if Steffani had not died in February 1728, when preparing to dispatch, or
having just dispatched, his Stabat Mater, the flow of information would have continued, at least until
Riva left London over a year later. The bankrupt Royal Academy of Music ended its ninth and final
season on 1 June 1728, after which the plans for a new academy were laid. During the following year,
Rolli reported to Senesino that Riva 'was more than ever the same, favouring the same man and
woman, puffing and snorting with anger, backbiting and raging' ('6 piu che mai l'istesso per l'istesso e
per I'istessa; e di questo uguale ritorno buffa, sbuffa, sparla e avvampa'). Since he was now without
influence, his 'raging' in favour of Bononcini, Cuzzoni and Farinelli was fruitless.76
On 5 April 1729 The Weekly Journal; or, The British Gazetteer reported that 'Signor Riva,
Secretary from the Duke of Modena', had 'received letters of revocation and had his audiences of
leave of their majesties and the rest of the royal family', and would 'in a few days set out . . . on his
return'. After numerous conferences with the Viennese ambassador he left London for Vienna on 26
April, presumably to argue for his master's claim to the Tuscan throne during negotiations for the
Treaty of Seville, which was signed in Vienna in November 1729.~~ Riva had pressed this claim zealously
a decade earlier.78 After his arrival in Vienna in 1729, however, he is not known to have played
any role in the negotiations. Since, after they ended, his clear plan was to return to London, it is not
known why he remained in Vienna, with a salary from the duke but without a diplomatic portfolio,
until his return to Modena after Rinaldo's death in 1737.
73 74 Lindgren, 'Zamboni', nos. 97, 102, 103 and 105a.
One of her letters (in I-MOe Fondo Campori, Y.Z.4.4) implies that Riva was involved in the negotiations: 'I have spoke
to my lord, & he will be sure to give you the paper [a promissory note, pledge or contract?] you require. I am very
glad Borosini comes, as well for the pleasure I expect in hearing him, as the mortification I am perswaded he will give some
-
people'.
75 See Muratori, Epistolario, vi, 2459 (letter no. 2366) and 25768 (letter nos. 2516-17), and Riva's replies in Sola, 'CuriositB',
296-8. See also Lucchi, 'Carteggi di Giuseppe Riva', 614, and the English translation of extracts from Riva's letters in
Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London, 1955; repr. New York, 1974), 185-6 and 197.
76 Rolli's letter (21 December 1728) is printed in Luigia Cellesi, 'Un poeta romano e un sopranista senese', Bullettino senese di
storia patria, 37 (1930), 321-3; his letters of 25 January, 4 February and 16 May 1729 are in idem, 'Attorno a Haendel:
Lettere inedite del poeta Paolo Rolli', Musica d'oggi, 15 (1933), 11-16. All four are translated in Deutsch, Handel, 229-30,
235-8 and 242-3.
77 Grand-Duke Cosimo 111 of Tuscany (1642-1723) had declared in June 1717 that Duke Rinaldo of Modena was to be his
successor. Since his declaration was not recognized by the powerful nations of Europe, several treaties of 1717-31 tried to
determine the proper succession. See Harold Acton, The Last Medici (3rd edn, London, 1980), 2669,2834 and 293.
78 See, for example, his letters to Muratori dated 21 April and 30 May 1719, published (with the incorrect year 1729) in Sola,
'CuriositB', 26S5.
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