They could sing like nightingales and fight like alley cats. They were the superstars of their era, the subject of salacious gossip and the targets of satirical pamphleteers. They were the opera divas of the 18th century, and they could have given some of today’s troubled celebrities a run for their money.
Their lives are featured in Handel and the Divas, an exhibition that opens today at the Handel House Museum (http://www.handelhouse.org) in London where the German-born composer was based for many years, and focuses on the careers and torrid personal lives of the leading ladies of the stage.
“Divas,” however, isn’t a word Handel would have recognized as it didn’t come into popular use until the 19th century.
However, “the time of Handel and his writing operas for these women is when women started playing really significant roles on the opera stage instead of being second fiddle to the castrati,” Martin Wyatt, deputy director of the Handel House Museum, said in a telephone interview from London yesterday.
“Also, at the time, it was the one semi-respectable occupation that an independent woman could have.”
Recent Comments