Giulietta Borsi-Deleurie: from where did she come?

 

My huge folder of Victorian Vocalists holds a fair number of stories which have remained unpublished for the reason that I have not yet succeeded in unearthing some basic fact. I think the time has come to send these out into the world, where they may find their missing part. I shall start with 

BORSI-DELEURIE, Giulietta (b c 1831; d Naples 19 January 1877).

Asti, 1862

I have tried. For years. But I still don’t know where Giulietta (or Giulia, or Juliette) Borsi came from. She appeared in London, in 1849, billed as being ‘of the Teatro Malibran, Venice’ or ‘of the Fenice, Milan’ making ‘her debut in this country’ at a very long and very minor concert given by one Fanny Wheadon at Crosby Hall (19 February). She sang ‘O mio Fernando’ and a piece called ‘E vero’ composed by one Louis Deleurie, who was apparently her husband, was encored in both, and praised for ‘a voice of considerable power and capable of great execution’. Someone in high places clearly agreed. The 18 year-old singer made her second London appearance in very different circumstances: on 2 April she was up on the stage at Exeter Hall, on the occasion of a Sacred Harmonic Society concert. Charlott Ann Birch sang The Creation, but Madame Borsi (sic) sang outside the oratorio, a rare thing in such a concert. She gave Handel’s ‘Holy, holy’ and a piece by Neukomm, and it was noted that she gave her pieces in clear, unaccented English. Was she actually English? If she were not, she apparently had intentions of being. When she sang at the Halle and Ernst concerts (23 May, ‘O mio Fernando’, ‘Il Segreto’) at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, the press announced her intention of settling there. Perhaps the wars in Italy were too pressing?

As it happened, they stayed only a few months. Mons Deleurie jumped into to play Basilio with Madame Montenegro’s touring opera, with which his wife was also billed, and I see her singing ‘By the Margin of Zurich’s Fair Waters’ and ‘Il segreto’ at Signor Paltoni’s benefit (9 July), and again at Liverpool’s Queen’s Hotel, where the local critic grumbled that she was not a soprano and was forcing her high notes. Dummy. The couple joined Paltoni in concert at York, and in operatic performances and concerts at Hull (L’Elisir d’amore, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Linda di Chamounix aria), and on 10 and 15 September the little team appeared with Pischek at the Liverpool Concert Hall.

 

And then they were gone. The rest of Giulietta’s busy career would be in Italy. Mostly, it seems, without Mons Deleurie, who ended up teaching music in Philadelphia and died at Valparaiso 1 June 1868. But she kept his name.

 

9 May 1850, they are in Florence – she soprano, he baritone – singing at trombone-teacher, Attilio Romani’s concert – she singing ‘Ah, mon fils!’ (‘voce robusta ed estesa’) and they duetting L’Elisir d’amore, and I spot our prima donna – labelled already as ‘egregia’ but also as ‘esordiente’– at the Teatro Alfieri, in August 1850, singing Il Prigione d’Edimborgo and her Barbiere (plus the Linda aria, and the Elisir duet) to considerable praise (‘avvenante giovane che mette i primi passi nella carriera teatrale e dotata d’una voce estremamente simpatico et estesa e di un sentire squisito…’). She stayed awhile, studying with the Florentine teacher Pietro Romani, and in 1852, was engaged at Milan’s Teatro Carcano, to perform Anna Bolena (‘giovane e bella cantatrice’) and for Carnevale at Modena’s Teatro Communale in Il Corsaro (Medora). 

 

She took some further time out for study in 1853, but at Autumn and Carnevale time she was back, singing the role of Leonora in the new hit, Il Trovatore, at the Teatro Santa Elisabetta in Messina. The cholera plague upset everyone’s plans in the year of 1854, but in October she joined the company at the Carlo Felice in Genoa, where she won rave reviews for her performance as Giovanna in Ricci’s Il Prigione d’Edimborgo, followed up by the same composer’s Gli Esposti and Il Birraio di Preston, and by La Cenerentola.

At Carnevale, this year, she visited Novara (Il Trovatore, Maria di Rohan), before moving on to the Teatro Naum, Constantinople (Macbeth, Poliuto, Il Trovatore, Marco Visconti) where she scored something of a triumph. But sometime, between her Turkish appearances, she returned to Britain. A little squib in the press noted that she had appeared in a private matinee at Her Majesty’s Theatre in July, and that manager Lumley had expressed his sorrow that he had only heard her when the season was all but over. He would have engaged her.

Instead of remaining in London, she returned to Bari (Poliuto, La Traviata, Il Birraio di Preston, Il Folco d’Arles) for Carnevale, and then was signed one more time for Constantinople where she opened to a ‘luminoso successo’ in Ernani and scored again in Macbeth (‘successo veramente completo’). 1858 also saw her at the Italian Opera of Odessa (Poliuto. I due Foscari, Attila) and the Teatro Apollo in Venice (Ernani with Pavani, Poliuto with Joseph Swift), and in 1859 at Pisa’s Teatro di Ravvivati, scoring a ‘lietissimo successo’ in local composer, Luigi Marcori’s new opera seria Nelinda (9 February 1859) and in I due Foscari (‘applausi e chiamati senza fine’) before being hired for the Fondo at Naples. The Naples season included performances of Ruta’s Diana di Vitry (Diana) and Michele Sansone’s Ruggiero di Sangineto (Silvia), but the critics were, characteristically, not impressed by the execution: ‘A l'exception de la Borsi-Deleurie, qui possède une belle voix et une bonne méthode; soprano, mezzosoprano, contralto, ténors et barytons, tout est au-dessous du médiocre …’.

She seems to have been next engaged at the Teatro Principale in Barcelona before, on 24 November she opened at La Scala, Milan, alongside della Costa and Cotogni, playing Odabella in Attila. The production was well liked and the press wrote: ‘The two artists who best sustained themselves in the favor of the public, were the Signora Borsi-Deleurie, and the basso Dalla Costa: a brave Amazon, and a most respectable King of the Huns. Signora Borsi-Deleurie, with her voice of extraordinary extent and volume, with her energetic singing and animated acting, had a general ovation […] receiving the most prolonged applause. She may be proud of her success, as she had to conquer so much opposition and present herself in a theatre where bad humour is always ready to explode like a mine’. On 26 December the theatre mounted Mose with Giulietta, cast as Sinaide alongside Tiberini and Beneventano, scoring yet another success.

 

Primavera 1861 saw her at Ferrara (Isaura in Isaura di Firenze) and at Parma (Maria in Vittorio Pisani, Marco Visconti, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth), 1862 at Asti and Cremona, 1863 at the Teatro Paganini in Genoa, before she encountered more problems in Naples. However, Naples got its act together and she remained at the San Carlo into 1864 (Norma).

 

In 1865, she was prima donna at Trieste, where, apart from giving her Lady Macbeth, Odabella and Abigaille – for if Giulietta was now allowed to be (mostly) a soprano, it was a soprano of the most dramatic kind – she created the leading role in Nikola Strmic’s opera La madre slava.

Macerata and Bucharest followed, then a cancellation at Rome when she and the management couldn’t agree on what she would play. In the summer season of 1867 she took up the role of Leonora in Petrella’s La Contessa d’Amalfi, created by Luigia Bendazzi in 1864, at Livorno’s Teatro di Floridi, and went on to play it again, over Carnevale 1867-8, at the Communale, Cesena. She also played La Favorita. On 7 November 1868, Giulietta appeared in Pacini’s Saffo at Bergamo’s Teatro Riccardi … and then, nothing.

 The next mention of her which I find is her obituary, eight years later. She died at Naples ‘at the age of 45’. She had, it was reported ‘left the theatre several years before her death because of illness’. Died: Madame Giulietta Borsi Deleurie Petrella. Petrella? I know that she, laterly, played first lady in his operas, but did she marry Errico Petrella? Reportedly, the composer liked fast women and the high life … but I don’t know about marriage. Another annoyingly untied end in this lady’s life.

 

Well, I’ve started. Maybe someone else can tie up the details of the life and career of this successful prima donna of the 1850s and 1860s …

 

If she were genuinely a ‘Borsi’, Giulietta could have been connected to any of a number of Borsis in the Italian theatre, beginning with choreographer and composer Alessandro Borsi and the producer Antonio Borsi and his wife, the celebrated soprano known as Teres[in]a di Giuli Borsi. But if she were, surely someone would have said? Often ...

So, who will find out for me the wherefrom and whomfrom of this lady?  And Petrella ...?