There’s no doubt that Gabrielli showed great sexual and personal independence. According to Leopold Mozart, ‘Mrs. Gabrielli is known in all of Italy like a terribly presumptuous madwoman’. When asked to perform by Catherine II of Russia, Gabrielli asked for 5,000 Ducats. To her assertion that she didn’t even pay her generals that much, Gabrielli replied: ‘Then let them sing’. Her missed performances, blamed at the time on ‘caprice’, seem to have been owing in part to gynecological disorders. Metastasio noted the contrast between her consciousness of her artistic worth and her ‘extreme timidity’ (which suggests Callas). To Charles Burney she seemed, at forty five, ‘the most intelligent and best bred virtuosa’ he had ever met, who bore herself with ‘all the grace and dignity of a Roman matron’ and could talk like a well-educated woman on all sorts of topics.
There was the early 20th Century soprano, I forget who, who was supposedly asked politely by an interviewer: "... and has the Frau Kammersängerin announced her Indispositions for the next season yet?"
There was the early 20th Century soprano, I forget who, who was supposedly asked politely by an interviewer: "... and has the Frau Kammersängerin announced her Indispositions for the next season yet?"
There was the early 20th Century soprano, I forget who, who was supposedly asked politely by an interviewer: "... and has the Frau Kammersängerin announced her Indispositions for the next season yet?"
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