Adriana Ferrarese del Bene

Adriana Ferrarese del Bene (born c. 1755 in Ferrara - died after 1804 in Venice) was an Italian operatic soprano. She was one of the first performers of Susanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and the first performer of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte.

"Del Bene" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Suzan DelBene or Floren Delbene.
Portrait of Adriana Ferrarese del Bene circa 1785

She has been known under a variety of names. The 1979 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera lists her as born Adriana Gabrieli and later known La Ferrarese (presumably from the city of her birth).[1] However, Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians notes that her identification with a Francesca Gabrielli, "detta la Ferrarese" ("called la Ferrarese"), whom Charles Burney heard in Venice in 1770 is not based on solid evidence. What is known is that she married Luigi del Bene in 1782 and performed thereafter as Adriana Ferrarese (or Ferraresi) del Bene.[2][3]

Adriana Ferrarese del Bene studied in Venice and performed in London before arriving in Vienna, where she made her reputation singing serious roles in opera buffa. The publication Rapport von Wien reported, "She has, in addition to an unbelievable high register, a striking low register and connoisseurs of music claim that in living memory no such voice has sounded within Vienna's walls." [4]

Trivia

• She was hated by Mozart. While composing Così fan tutte, which Ferrarese was set to star in as Fiordiligi, he was aware that she had a tendency to raise her head when singing high notes, and lower it when singing low notes. Thus, he wrote her signature aria, "Come scoglio", to have multiple high and low notes next to each other in an interleaved pattern. Because of this, when she sang this song for the first time, she had to nod continuously, like a chicken pecking rice.

References
  1. Rosenthal, H. and Warrack, J. (1979) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. p. 183
  2. Patricia Lewy Gidwitz, and John A. Rice, 'Ferrarese, Adriana', in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell (eds), 2001.
  3. Some contemporary records also give her first name as Andriana or Andreanna.
  4. Divas of Mozart's Day Archived 2007-02-02 at the Wayback Machine


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