Co-stars & Rivals:  CATERINA REGINA MINGOTTIBorn:Naples, 16 Feb 1722 Died:Neuburg a

Co-stars & Rivals:  CATERINA REGINA MINGOTTIBorn: Naples, 16 Feb 1722 Died: Neuburg an der Donau, 1 Oct 1808 Voice: sopranoPersonality: Regina Mingotti was an Italo-German singer. Her early life is known almost wholly from her account to Burney in 1772, which is inaccurate in at least one important respect. According to this, she was the daughter of a German officer in the Austrian service at Naples and was educated in a convent at Grätz in Silesia. She attributed her firm intonation to the abbess, who made her practise scales without keyboard accompaniment. According to Prota-Giurleo she was the sister of the composer Michelangelo Valentini, hence presumably Italian, and may have had an early, undocumented Italian career. Her first recorded appearances were in Hamburg from 1743 to 1747, as a leading member of a notable company run by the impresario Pietro Mingotti, whom she married but soon parted from. She scored an immediate success in Dresden (1747), where she was kept on by the Saxon court and studied with Porpora. She sang in Naples, Prague, Madrid, Paris and London, where she took over the management of the Kings Theatre together with the leader of the orchestra, Felice Giardini, and incurred much obloquy. Her retirement was spent at Dresden, then Munich, and finally Neuburg, where her son Samuel von Buckingham was inspector of forests; he was apparently born (in London) of a liaison with a Piedmontese nobleman. Burney called her perfect mistress of her art, always grand in her style though lacking in grace and softness; her practical musical intelligence, he wrote, was equal to that of any composer he had known. She was admired as an actress, particularly in the breeches roles she often sang. Her portrait in crayons, by Mengs, is in the Dresden Gallery. It represents her, when young, with a piece of music in her hand; and, if faithful, it makes her more nearly beautiful than it was easy for those who knew her later in life to believe her ever to have been. ‘She is painted in youth, plumpness, and with a very expressive countenance.’ One fact: In 1751 Mingotti went to Spain, where she sang with Gizziello in the operas directed by Farinelli, who was so strict a disciplinarian that he would not allow her to sing anywhere but at the Opera, nor even to practise in a room that looked on the street. One quote: ‘She spoke three languages, German, French, and Italian, so well that it was difficult to say which of them was her own. English she likewise spoke, and Spanish, well enough to converse in them, and understood Latin; but, in the three languages first mentioned, she was truly eloquent.’ Charles BurneyOne hit: Ah, se provar mi vuoi (Attilio Regolo) -- source link

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