Performance and Identity on London's Operatic Stage: The 'Rival Queens', Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni

女歌手竞争的故事在大众的歌剧观念中具有高度的象征意义。在这项研究中，我的目的是通过对这些传奇竞争中最重要的一项研究，来展示这些故事对我们批判性理解歌剧的重要性。这些竞争在1720年代的伦敦，在亨德尔的管理期间，在弗朗西斯卡·库佐尼和福斯蒂娜·博尔多尼之间爆发。在谈到这些女性时，与其说我是在寻求创造一种新的传记叙事，不如说是在重新评估对旧叙事的改造：围绕她们遭遇的喧嚣报道掩盖了女性自己声音的奇怪缺失，这表明（或许）这种竞争与其说是她们的创造，不如说是其他人的制造。本研究对女性竞争主题的评价将通过对18世纪歌剧中帮助形成歌手身份的过程的欣赏而出现。在1726-1728年间为“对手歌手”准备的歌剧中，平等和差异的棘手问题尤为紧迫，我们可以特别找到这种关注。我将探索为这两位女性而写的音乐、歌词、讽刺和更严肃的历史，以展示这些作品实际上是如何创造她们的。因此，Giovanni Bononcini的《astianatte_》和G.F. Handel的《admeto_》、《riccardo Primo_》和《siro_》，以及其他作品，将被用来阐明创造表演者身份的复杂的、共同的过程——这一过程，人们希望，将反过来揭示歌剧体验和流派本身的本质。在介绍一章之后，将18世纪早期舞台表演的性质置于背景下，以及它在个人身份方面为女性提出的特殊问题，一系列对个人作品的研究将呈现Bordoni-Cuzzoni竞争的不同方面。乔瓦尼·波农西尼（Giovanni Bononcini）的歌剧《阿斯提亚纳特》（1727）中，据说两个女人发生了打斗。在这一章中，我们将展示歌剧管理者是如何通过将她们的角色分化成我们所熟悉的好女人/坏女人的两分法来操纵女性的敌对情绪的。下一章，关于亨德尔的《admeto_》，将考虑女性身份的可塑性，证明这部作品对伪装、舞台和音乐设计的玩弄向当代观众展示了对立是如何转化为对等的（并再次转化）。这种可变性在我们看来似乎是矛盾的，但对于18世纪的观众来说，他们肯定会相信女性是可变性的。第四章将采取更实际的倾向，认为在1727年11月首演之前对亨德尔的《里卡多·普里莫》所做的实质性修改是为了缓解歌手和他们派系之间的紧张关系，使平等的概念更容易接受。在考虑了女性明显竞争的清晰表达之后，在第五章中，我将转向他们的男主角，阉割者塞内西诺，询问歌剧对女性的强调如何影响他的角色。在亨德尔的《西罗》中，我们将看到塞内西诺困境的戏剧化，表明他作为女性之间竞争的焦点的地位使他通常的英雄角色无效，使他沦落为爱情利益的地位。最后，结束语将转向女性最为人所知的特征，她们的装饰能力，询问对装饰的关注不仅可以告诉我们女性的声音，还可以告诉我们18世纪社会对她们的看法。

Stories of female singer rivalry assume highly symbolic status in the popular conception of opera. In this study I aim to show the significance such stories can hold for our critical understanding of opera through an examination of perhaps the most important of these legendary rivalries -- that stirred up in 1720s London during Handel's management, between Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. In turning to these women, I am seeking not so much to create a new biographical narrative as to re-evaluate the engineering of the old: the clamour of report surrounding their encounter masks the curious absence of the women's own voices, suggesting (perhaps) that the rivalry may have been less their creation than the manufacture of others. This study's appraisal of the topos of female rivalry will emerge through an appreciation of the processes that helped to form singer identity in eighteenth-century opera. In the operas prepared for the 'rival singers' during the period 1726-1728, where the thorny issues of equality and difference were particularly pressing, we can especially trace such concerns. I will explore the music, libretti, satires and more sober histories written for and about these two women to show how these works, in effect, created them. Thus Giovanni Bononcini's _Astianatte_, and G.F. Handel's _Admeto_, _Riccardo Primo_ and _Siroe_, among other works, will be used to elucidate the complex, corporate process of creating performer identity -- a process which, it is hoped, will in turn shed new light on the nature of the operatic experience and of the genre itself.Following an introductory chapter, contextualising the nature of performance on the early eighteenth-century stage, and the particular problems it presented for women in terms of personal identity, a series of studies of individual works will present different facets of the Bordoni-Cuzzoni rivalry. A chapter on Giovanni Bononcini's _Astianatte_ (1727), the opera in which the women reputedly came to blows, will show how the opera management manipulated the women's antagonism by polarising their characters into the familiar good/bad woman dichotomy. The following chapter, on Handel's _Admeto_, will consider the malleable nature of the women's identities, demonstrating that this work's play with disguise, staging, and musical design showed the contemporary audience how opposition could be turned into equivalence (and back again). Such changeability, which might to us seem contradictory, for an eighteenth-century audience would have confirmed an overarching belief in the mutability of women. The fourth chapter will take a more practical bent, arguing that substantial changes made to Handel's _Riccardo Primo_ before its premiere in November 1727 were designed to alleviate tensions between the singers and their factions, rendering the concept of equality more palatable. Having considered the articulation of the women's apparent rivalry, in the fifth chapter I will turn to their male lead, the castrato Senesino, to ask how the operas' emphasis on the women affected his role. In Handel's _Siroe_, we will see a dramatisation of Senesino's plight, showing that his status as the focus of competition between the women nullified his more usual heroic role, reducing him to the status of love interest. Finally, the conclusion will turn to the feature for which the women were best known, their powers of ornamentation, to ask what the focus on embellishment might tell us not only about the women's voices, but about the way they themselves were perceived in eighteenth-century society.