Anna Maria Scarlatti

Scarlatti, Anna Mariaunlocked Roberto Pagano https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.6002278253 Published in print: 20 January 2001Published online: 2001 Updated in this version updated and revised, 3 September 2014

Member of Scarlatti family

(b Palermo, Dec 8, 1661; d Naples, Dec 14, 1703). Singer, sister of (1) Alessandro Scarlatti. She went to Rome in June 1672 with her mother, Alessandro, and younger sister (3) Melchiorra. She sang professionally from at least 1680, when she performed in Pietro Simone Agostini’s Il ratto delle Sabine, along with the renowned Siface Siface (G.F. Grossi) and Francesco De Castris, at the Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice. In 1679 she caused difficulties for Alessandro in Rome ‘on account of [her] secret marriage with an ecclesiastic [Paolo Massonio Astrolusco]’, as the Avvisi di Roma reported. Dent was right in identifying her as one of the ‘puttane commedianti’ involved in a scandalous traffic in public offices (including the appointment of the maestro di cappella at the Naples court, where Alessandro was preferred to other Neapolitan contenders) and imprisoned in the convent of S Antoniello. (Two months later the Duchess of Maddaloni secured the release of the ‘canterine’ from the viceroy.) Anna Maria is never named in Neapolitan opera librettos or theatrical documents: engaging his sister as ‘terza donna’, Alessandro had cautiously hidden her under the pseudonym of ‘Caterina Scarani’, but Anna Maria was obliged to recover her real identity at the Banco San Giacomo in order to draw her fees. Walker (MR, vol.12, 1951) supposed the protagonist of the Roman and Neapolitan scandals to have been Melchiorra, but professional singing is documented only for Anna Maria.

Anna Maria’s husband Paolo Massonio joined the imperial army and died in Hungary in 1687. In 1699 Anna Maria married the Neapolitan shipowner Nicola Barbapiccola, who later became impresario of the Teatro S Bartolomeo in Naples and staged (7) Domenico Scarlatti’s first operas; their daughter Giuseppina Eleonora (b 1700) was an amateur musician and a pupil of Jommelli. In Anna Maria’s will, written under the influence of Melchiorra and Melchiorra’s husband Nicola Pagano, Anna Maria authorized Alessandro to take charge of her two children and her effects. The will later caused a difficult lawsuit.