Luigi Marchesi

Luigi Marchesi (Milan, 1755 – Milan, December 1829) was one of the most celebrated castrati of Italian opera in the last third of the eighteenth century, and he also composed and performed salon pieces. His career is useful for understanding how the opera seria star functioned at a time when the high male voice still dominated the stages of Italy, Germany, Russia and England.

He trained in Milan with the tenor Albuzzi and with the castrato Caironi, and joined the cathedral choir at a very young age, where he later received composition lessons from its director, Fioroni. His stage debut took place in Rome, at the Teatro delle Dame, in female roles in three comic operas between 1773 and 1774; from then on he sang neither women's roles nor comic parts. After brief engagements in Milan, Venice and Treviso, he joined the court at Munich in 1776, but remained there for only two seasons, being dismissed in January 1778 because of the cuts that followed the death of the Elector.

His consolidation came with his contract at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples (1778–1779), where he sang five operas by Mysliveček, Platania and Martín y Soler. From there he worked with Bianchi and Sarti, took part in premieres in Turin, Rome, Lucca, Padua, Florence and Mantua, and in 1782 was appointed chamber singer to the Turin court, a post he held until 1798, with permission to travel nine months of the year. In 1785 he performed in Vienna, Warsaw and St Petersburg, where he inaugurated the Hermitage Theatre with Sarti's Armida e Rinaldo. Between 1788 and 1790 he divided his time between Italy and London, where his greatest success was the premiere of Sarti's Giulio Sabino. He then returned to Italy, where he spent the rest of his career, with brief trips to Vienna in 1798 and 1801; his last known public appearance was in Milan, in May 1805, in Mayr's Lodoiska.

His legacy rests largely on the testimony of his contemporaries. It is recorded that his fees were very high and that a good part of his earnings went to needy musicians; furthermore, he founded the Pio Istituto Filarmonico of Milan in 1783, which organised annual charity concerts for the widows and orphans of musicians. Burney admired his elegance, though he criticised his excessive ornamentation in recitative, and the account of Pietro Verri, although enthusiastic, notes that he lacked that feeling capable of touching the listener's soul. Among his pupils were B. R. Pisaroni and G. Pacini. He left three collections of arias and an arrangement of Sarti's 'Lungi dal caro bene', as well as numerous manuscript arias and duets.