Giovanni Battista Andreoni (1720–1797)
at Haendel.it was an Italian

castrato A castrato (Italian, plural: ''castrati'') is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to ...

singer with a

mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (; ; meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middle C ...

range. Andreoni went in 1736 to sing for the court of

Lucca Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one o ...

. Then in 1738/39 he was engaged by the opera houses in Venice, after which he went to London. He was engaged for the season of 1740 in London. He seems to have had an artificial low

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...

contralto A contralto () is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type. The contralto's vocal range is fairly rare; similar to the mezzo-soprano, and almost identical to that of a countertenor, typically b ...

voice, for his name appears to the song "Let Hymen oft appear" in Handel's ''

L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato ("The Cheerful, the Thoughtful, and the Moderate Man"), HWV 55, is a pastoral ode by George Frideric Handel based on the poetry of John Milton. History Handel composed the work over the period of 19 January to 4 February 1740,Michael O'Connell ...

'', to which the composer added in his manuscript the words "", meaning that it must be

transposed In linear algebra, the transpose of a matrix is an operator which flips a matrix over its diagonal; that is, it switches the row and column indices of the matrix by producing another matrix, often denoted by (among other notations). The tr ...

for him. The song was probably sung by him in Italian, as a translation, beginning "", is added, as also to the song "And ever against eating cares" (""), which is given to the same singer. He had arrived too recently to be able to learn the language in time for the performance. He sang the contralto man's part in Handel's ''

Imeneo ''Imeneo'' (alternative title: ''Hymen'', HWV 41) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Silvio Stampiglia's ''Imeneo''. Handel had begun composition in September 1738, but did ...

'' the same year, and in '' Deidamia'' in 1741. He does not seem to have gone with Handel to Ireland, but went on to work in Florence and Spain.

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Andreoni, Giovanni Battista 1720 births 1797 deaths Castrati 18th-century Italian male opera singers