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Papers by Dr. Claudia R E N E Wier
Theatre Survey, 2023
Quickly Ascending to Heaven, Hermaphrodite Beauty of the celestial magic, You descend to animate ... more Quickly Ascending to Heaven, Hermaphrodite Beauty of the celestial magic, You descend to animate Angelic aura, alone in your clear, eternal beauty all other beauties stand before you. While ANNA's voice, In Deidamia converses, a musical passage dissolves in the aura, a most divine ray although enclosed within an earthly veil, it knows the harmony of heaven on earth. 1 So writes "M.T." upon witnessing Anna Renzi (ca. 1620-after 1661) perform crossdressed as the character Ergindo in the 1644 Venetian opera La Deidamia at the Teatro Novissimo. Indeed, "M.T." was so captivated by Renzi's voice and presence on the stage that, he proclaims, "if as Ergindo she sighs, a celestial aura breathes, so that everyone here is blessed and nourished by the nectar from above, and her beautiful face opens, a delicate face, almost a bright flame, and with a clear flash inflames souls." 2 This poem is one of several in Le glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana (1644), a booklet of poems dedicated to Renzi and expressing the power she exercised over spectators through her performance. Following Claudio Sartori, Ellen Rosand avers that Renzi was "the first 'prima donna' in operatic history" which is a status for which she achieved universal acclamation. 3 This acclaim was both a product of the critical response elicited by Renzi's luminous stage persona and a negotiation of gender in the marketplace. As such, Renzi pioneered the profession, and her performances inaugurated several of the first opera houses in Italian-speaking lands and beyond. As I demonstrate, the extraordinary sound of skilled singing granted her the privilege of autonomous decision making and movement within the city and beyond its borders. Due to her personal autonomy and professional performance, I posit that Renzi challenged societal norms and influenced perceptions of women and their agency in the early seventeenth century.
Academia Letters, 2021
The warrior queen was a stock role type derived from the ancient cataloguing of women updated by ... more The warrior queen was a stock role type derived from the ancient cataloguing of women updated by Ariosto, Tasso, the commedia dell'arte, and seventeenth-century Venetian opera. Catalogued women were transformed into standard operatic types in a repertoire of characters in various mythological and historical settings (Heller 17). The type migrated and was fitted to current tastes and social priorities conforming to commonly held conceptions about women. To this end, librettists subjected women's power to male control by opera's end. Warrior Queen operas were popular from roughly 1645 to 1730. Here, I examine L' Artemisia of 1657. I will demonstrate how the early diva's performance of the Bellatrix queen Artemisia in the "continuous present" or "real time" and place of performance performatively re-animated the ancient warrior queen in a hybrid link between life, literature, and in the "foreignness of cultural translation" (Bhabha226). While Bhabha centers his cultural critique on postcolonial racism, I borrow his trans-cultural framework to theorize the migration of the historical figure into legends, stories, and operatic performance. The Latinword translatio means "a carrying across, removal, transporting; transfer of meaning" (Etymology). While performing Artemisia the diva performatively bridged the temporal gap to enliven and transport the ancient figure into live performance. The diva's corporeal translation became a liminal space within Venice's patriarchal context bringing something new to audiences in new ways. Her body in performance bore the trope of the Bellatrix queen translated into the new bodily text of virtuosic performance. Witnesses translated her sight and sound to make meaning of it. In this way, and on several planes, the diva's performance was hybrid as she rendered the past into the present with the "presence" of her live performance. In this period, sovereigns like Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) and Queen Christina
Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstag... more Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstage, as virtuosic opera singers, and as independent professionals in Venice. They accomplished this partly in prototypical commercial opera houses. From such spaces, the sounds of their voices and the memory of their performances in cross-dressed, madwomen, and warrior woman roles spilled out on the cutting edge of performance to spread the novel form across Europe. Their performance transgressed normative gender
Theatre Survey, 2010
Italian prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni (ca. 1698–1770) was the first internationally recognized vi... more Italian prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni (ca. 1698–1770) was the first internationally recognized virtuosa to sing high soprano women’s roles. Although her work served as a model to the female performers who followed, no in-depth critical study has been written about her groundbreaking career on the opera stage of the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she was the celebrated prima donna from 1723 to 1728. During her tenure, the Royal Academy became one of the most important opera companies in Europe, rivaling those of the Viennese court, the Paris Opera, and the Italian opera houses of Naples and Venice. Her arrival on the London stage signaled a shift in the ways composers set roles in relationship to vocal categories and gender. In particular, Cuzzoni’s superior virtuosic vocal abilities influenced and inspired German George Friedrich Handel’s (1685–1759) compositional style and his musical treatment of dramatic elements.
Drafts by Dr. Claudia R E N E Wier
Wier Dissertation Abstract Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social id... more Wier Dissertation Abstract
Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstage, as virtuosic opera singers, and as independent professionals in the Venetian cityscape. They accomplished this partly in prototypical commercial opera houses. From such spaces the sound of their voices, and the memory of their performances in cross-dressed and warrior woman roles spilled out on the cutting edge of performance to spread the novel form across early modern Europe. The performance of cross-dressed and warrior woman roles transgressed normative gender codes and is one way early modern divas overcame misogynist perceptions. In fact, by occupying “the norm in myriad ways,” these women exceeded and reworked accepted norms performatively while modelling independent agency and pioneering a new profession for women (Judith Butler, Undoing 217).
For my project, I trace the reception of the early modern diva’s “sonic performances of gender” (Andrew Dell’Antonio) and the movement of her resonant body from opera stage to city-street. To do this, I apply J. L. Austin’s analytic lens of performativity as employed in gender studies and performance studies scholarship to analyze the social impact of the early modern operatic diva’s performance of self. My interdisciplinary methodology interlaces material historical data, close textual and musical readings, with performance theory. Specifically, I examine the music and texts of five performance scores to understand how composer Francesco Cavalli (1602 - 1676) and his librettist collaborators tailored warrior woman roles to fit the voices of lead singers like Anna Renzi (c.1620 - c.1661). To provide the socio-material context outside of score and text, I focus on Renzi’s career and the reception of her performances in La finta pazza (1641) and La Deidamia (1645) along with perceptions of her in everyday life. With theoretical approaches centered on performativity, gender, reception, and celebrity status, I work to wrest out remnant traces of ephemeral “presence and its reception through embodied understanding” of performance embedded in scores, letters, and performance accounts (Diane Taylor, The Archive 292).
Theatre Survey, 2023
Quickly Ascending to Heaven, Hermaphrodite Beauty of the celestial magic, You descend to animate ... more Quickly Ascending to Heaven, Hermaphrodite Beauty of the celestial magic, You descend to animate Angelic aura, alone in your clear, eternal beauty all other beauties stand before you. While ANNA's voice, In Deidamia converses, a musical passage dissolves in the aura, a most divine ray although enclosed within an earthly veil, it knows the harmony of heaven on earth. 1 So writes "M.T." upon witnessing Anna Renzi (ca. 1620-after 1661) perform crossdressed as the character Ergindo in the 1644 Venetian opera La Deidamia at the Teatro Novissimo. Indeed, "M.T." was so captivated by Renzi's voice and presence on the stage that, he proclaims, "if as Ergindo she sighs, a celestial aura breathes, so that everyone here is blessed and nourished by the nectar from above, and her beautiful face opens, a delicate face, almost a bright flame, and with a clear flash inflames souls." 2 This poem is one of several in Le glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana (1644), a booklet of poems dedicated to Renzi and expressing the power she exercised over spectators through her performance. Following Claudio Sartori, Ellen Rosand avers that Renzi was "the first 'prima donna' in operatic history" which is a status for which she achieved universal acclamation. 3 This acclaim was both a product of the critical response elicited by Renzi's luminous stage persona and a negotiation of gender in the marketplace. As such, Renzi pioneered the profession, and her performances inaugurated several of the first opera houses in Italian-speaking lands and beyond. As I demonstrate, the extraordinary sound of skilled singing granted her the privilege of autonomous decision making and movement within the city and beyond its borders. Due to her personal autonomy and professional performance, I posit that Renzi challenged societal norms and influenced perceptions of women and their agency in the early seventeenth century.
Academia Letters, 2021
The warrior queen was a stock role type derived from the ancient cataloguing of women updated by ... more The warrior queen was a stock role type derived from the ancient cataloguing of women updated by Ariosto, Tasso, the commedia dell'arte, and seventeenth-century Venetian opera. Catalogued women were transformed into standard operatic types in a repertoire of characters in various mythological and historical settings (Heller 17). The type migrated and was fitted to current tastes and social priorities conforming to commonly held conceptions about women. To this end, librettists subjected women's power to male control by opera's end. Warrior Queen operas were popular from roughly 1645 to 1730. Here, I examine L' Artemisia of 1657. I will demonstrate how the early diva's performance of the Bellatrix queen Artemisia in the "continuous present" or "real time" and place of performance performatively re-animated the ancient warrior queen in a hybrid link between life, literature, and in the "foreignness of cultural translation" (Bhabha226). While Bhabha centers his cultural critique on postcolonial racism, I borrow his trans-cultural framework to theorize the migration of the historical figure into legends, stories, and operatic performance. The Latinword translatio means "a carrying across, removal, transporting; transfer of meaning" (Etymology). While performing Artemisia the diva performatively bridged the temporal gap to enliven and transport the ancient figure into live performance. The diva's corporeal translation became a liminal space within Venice's patriarchal context bringing something new to audiences in new ways. Her body in performance bore the trope of the Bellatrix queen translated into the new bodily text of virtuosic performance. Witnesses translated her sight and sound to make meaning of it. In this way, and on several planes, the diva's performance was hybrid as she rendered the past into the present with the "presence" of her live performance. In this period, sovereigns like Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) and Queen Christina
Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstag... more Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstage, as virtuosic opera singers, and as independent professionals in Venice. They accomplished this partly in prototypical commercial opera houses. From such spaces, the sounds of their voices and the memory of their performances in cross-dressed, madwomen, and warrior woman roles spilled out on the cutting edge of performance to spread the novel form across Europe. Their performance transgressed normative gender
Theatre Survey, 2010
Italian prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni (ca. 1698–1770) was the first internationally recognized vi... more Italian prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni (ca. 1698–1770) was the first internationally recognized virtuosa to sing high soprano women’s roles. Although her work served as a model to the female performers who followed, no in-depth critical study has been written about her groundbreaking career on the opera stage of the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she was the celebrated prima donna from 1723 to 1728. During her tenure, the Royal Academy became one of the most important opera companies in Europe, rivaling those of the Viennese court, the Paris Opera, and the Italian opera houses of Naples and Venice. Her arrival on the London stage signaled a shift in the ways composers set roles in relationship to vocal categories and gender. In particular, Cuzzoni’s superior virtuosic vocal abilities influenced and inspired German George Friedrich Handel’s (1685–1759) compositional style and his musical treatment of dramatic elements.
Wier Dissertation Abstract Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social id... more Wier Dissertation Abstract
Seventeenth-century Venetian operatic divas pioneered a new social identity for women both onstage, as virtuosic opera singers, and as independent professionals in the Venetian cityscape. They accomplished this partly in prototypical commercial opera houses. From such spaces the sound of their voices, and the memory of their performances in cross-dressed and warrior woman roles spilled out on the cutting edge of performance to spread the novel form across early modern Europe. The performance of cross-dressed and warrior woman roles transgressed normative gender codes and is one way early modern divas overcame misogynist perceptions. In fact, by occupying “the norm in myriad ways,” these women exceeded and reworked accepted norms performatively while modelling independent agency and pioneering a new profession for women (Judith Butler, Undoing 217).
For my project, I trace the reception of the early modern diva’s “sonic performances of gender” (Andrew Dell’Antonio) and the movement of her resonant body from opera stage to city-street. To do this, I apply J. L. Austin’s analytic lens of performativity as employed in gender studies and performance studies scholarship to analyze the social impact of the early modern operatic diva’s performance of self. My interdisciplinary methodology interlaces material historical data, close textual and musical readings, with performance theory. Specifically, I examine the music and texts of five performance scores to understand how composer Francesco Cavalli (1602 - 1676) and his librettist collaborators tailored warrior woman roles to fit the voices of lead singers like Anna Renzi (c.1620 - c.1661). To provide the socio-material context outside of score and text, I focus on Renzi’s career and the reception of her performances in La finta pazza (1641) and La Deidamia (1645) along with perceptions of her in everyday life. With theoretical approaches centered on performativity, gender, reception, and celebrity status, I work to wrest out remnant traces of ephemeral “presence and its reception through embodied understanding” of performance embedded in scores, letters, and performance accounts (Diane Taylor, The Archive 292).