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Updated: May 24, 2025
Rossini only followed the traditions of Italian music in giving singers full opportunity to embroider the naked score at their own pleasure. He was led to change this practice by the following incident. The tenor-singer Velluti was then the favorite of the Italian theatres, and indulged in the most unwarrantable tricks with his composers.
The new Signory entered upon their office, and the Gonfalonier, in order to acquire reputation, and deter those who might intend to oppose him, sent Donato Velluti, his predecessor, to prison, upon the charge of having applied the public money to his own use.
Velluti had disfigured his performance by introducing a perfect cascade of roulades and fiorituri, but Pasta's delivery of the music, while inspired by her great tragic sensibility, was marked by such breadth and fidelity that many thought they heard the music for the first time. A ludicrous story is told of the first performance in London.
I should indeed be a great actress if at any time I could find a gesture expressing profound misery with such truth." Pasta's next remarkable impersonation was that of Armando in "Il Crociato in Egitto," written by Meyerbeer for Signor Velluti, the last of the race of male sopranos.
From that time the Rossini music was marked by its florid and brilliant embroidery. Of the same Velluti, spoken of above, an incident is told, illustrating the musical craze of the country and the period. A Milanese gentleman, whose father was very ill, met his friend in the street "Where are you going?" "To the Scala to be sure." "How! your father lies at the point of death." "Yes! yes!
We envy you. Mars is gone, and Sontag is gone, and Pasta is going and Velluti is out of voice and they are playing tragedies at the Haymarket and Vauxhall will never be dry again and the Funny Club are drenched to their skins every day and "the sweet shady side of Pall Mall" is a forgotten blessing. You will be dull in the country if this weather continue but not so dirty as upon the Macadam.
Thunders of applause greeted her, and while trembling with excitement she felt her arm grasped by a hand of iron. "Briccona!" hissed a voice in her ear, as Velluti glared on her, gnashing his teeth with rage.
She had to sing with Velluti a duet in Zingarelli's "Romeo e Giulietta," and in the morning they rehearsed it together, Velluti reserving his fioriture for the evening, lest the young débutante should endeavor to imitate his ornaments.
She made her début on June 7, 1825, and was immediately engaged for the remaining six weeks of the season at five hundred pounds. Her first success was followed by a second in Meyerber's 'Il Crociato, in which she sang with Velluti, the last of that extraordinary genre of artists, the male sopranos.
He endeavored to show them their certain and immediate danger, and that their only remedy was to take arms, and cause Donato Velluti, who was yet Gonfalonier, to assemble the people in the piazza and create a Balia. He would then deprive the new Signory of the magistracy, appoint another, burn the present balloting purses, and by means of a new Squittini, provide themselves with friends.
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