Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Negri, Maria Caterina

(b Bologna; fl 1719–45). Italian contralto, sister of Maria Rosa Negri. She studied under Pasi and made her first known stage appearance at Bologna in Bononcini's Camilla, after which she sang in Modena (1720), Florence (1721), Livorno (1722), Milan (1722 and 1723), Faenza (1723) and Ferrara (1724). During the period 1724–7 she was attached to the company of Antonio Denzio at the theatre of Count Sporck in Prague, where she sang Alcina in Antonio Bioni’s Orlando furioso. She appeared in three operas by Vivaldi in Venice in 1727–8, then found engagements at Forlì and Livorno (1729), Genoa (1730) and Naples (1733), where she appeared in Pergolesi's Lo frate ’nnamorato. From November 1733 until summer 1737 she was a member of Handel’s company in London, singing in 11 of his operas, the serenata Parnasso in festa and a number of pasticcios and oratorio revivals, including Deborah (Sisera), Esther (Mordecai) and probably Il trionfo del tempo. In 1735 she appeared in Aminta, a Pastoral Opera in Dublin. After leaving London she sang in Florence (1737–8), Lisbon (1740–1), Parma (1743), Rimini (1744) and Gorizia (1745). The parts Handel composed for her – Carilda in Arianna, Polinesso in Ariodante, Bradamante in Alcina, Irene in Atalanta, Tullius in Arminio, Arsace in Berenice and Cloride in Parnasso in festa – suggest a singer of moderate competence, though an occasional aria demands an agile technique. The compass is a to e''. She often played male roles.

She should not be confused with the singer Caterina Bassi Negri (fl 1734–46), known as Caterina Bassi before her marriage to the singer Giovanni Domenico Negri in 1739 or 1740.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SartoriL

D.E. Freeman: The Opera Theater of Count Franz Anton von Sporck in Prague (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992)

WINTON DEAN, DANIEL E. FREEMAN

Negri, Maria Rosa [Risack, Rosa Negri]

(b Bologna, c1715; d Dresden, 4 Aug 1760). Italian mezzo-soprano, sister of Maria Caterina Negri. She was engaged for Dresden in 1730 and accompanied her sister Caterina Negri to London in 1733. She sang in four Handel operas, all revivals, during the period 1733–6, and probably in the 1734 revival of Deborah. Handel wrote the part of Euterpe in Parnasso in festa for her, and probably the original role of Dalinda in Ariodante, although this was altered for soprano before performance. She was in Dublin with her sister in 1735–6. In Dresden she sang in a series of operas by Hasse, including Cajo Fabricio (1734), La clemenza di Tito (1738), Arminio (1745) and La spartana generosa (1747). In 1743 she appeared with her sister at Parma as Rosa Negri Risack. Handel appears to have thought little of her; the parts of Melo in Sosarme (1734), Eurilla in Il pastor fido (1734) and Morgana in Alcina (1736) were much shortened and simplified for her. Their compass is a to f''; her Hasse parts are more rewarding and call for expressiveness, fluent if limited coloratura and a compass b to g''.

An Anna or Antonia Negri, known as La Mestrina, sang frequently at Venice (1728–42), as well as at Parma, Modena and elsewhere, and married the tenor Pellegrino Tomj. According to Fürstenau she was a sister of Maria Rosa and was engaged for Dresden at the same time, but no parts sung by her at Dresden have been discovered, and there may be confusion with another singer. (SartoriL)

WINTON DEAN

Negri, Massimiliano.

See Neri, Massimiliano.

Negri, Vittorio

(b Milan, 16 Oct 1923). Italian conductor and musicologist. His studies of violin, composition and conducting at the Milan Conservatory were interrupted by a serious illness and by World War II. After it ended, he studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Bernhard Paumgartner, whose assistant conductor he became in 1952. A few years later, while preparing an edition of Vivaldi's ‘Four Seasons’ for I Musici in Amsterdam, the producer fell ill and Philips, the recording company, asked Negri to replace him. This was the start of a 25-year period as a producer for that company, overseeing recordings of orchestral and chamber music; he also made a large number of recordings as a conductor (chiefly with the Dresden Staatskapelle and the Berlin Chamber Orchestra). In this capacity he concentrated on Venetian Baroque composers, and in particular on Vivaldi, editing and directing a large number of his works including concertos, the complete sacred choral works (then largely unknown), the oratorio Juditha triumphans and the opera Tito Manlio. He discovered Cimarosa's Requiem in G minor in Einsiedeln Abbey, conducted the first modern performance of it at the Montreux Festival, and with it won a Grand Prix du Disque Lyrique in 1970 (the first of several such awards). Ten years earlier he had formed his own chamber orchestra in Perugia, where he taught at the conservatory; he also formed the Italian Society of Musicology. In 1980 he moved away from record producing in order to concentrate on conducting, and subsequently appeared at the Orange and Versailles festivals, at La Scala and with the Boston SO.

LIONEL SALTER

Negrilla

(Sp., from gente negra: ‘black people’).

A villancico depicting the music, song and dance of black people. It is often, more specifically, a canario (villancico from the Canary Islands, which served as an assembly station for Spanish slave traders during the 16th to 18th centuries). The form is characterized by the following features: a strongly syncopated sesquialtera rhythm, the frequent use of a narrative text, leaps in the dance, and parody of African slaves speaking in Spanish (confusion between vowels, a reversal of genders of nouns and adjectives, lack of agreement of gender, confusion of singular and plural, and failure to distinguish between certain consonants). Negrillas were at times sung by choirboys with blackened faces at Matins on saints’ days, which may account for the very high tessituras of the voice parts.

E. THOMAS STANFORD/R