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15 Facts About Gaspare Pacchierotti

1.

Gaspare Pacchierotti was a mezzo-soprano castrato, and one of the most famous singers of his time.

2.

Gaspare Pacchierotti made further appearances under his assumed name in Venice and Innsbruck.

3.

Gaspare Pacchierotti's honour insulted, Ruffo again challenged the singer to a duel, and this time it was none other than the King of Naples who ordered Gaspare to be released from prison.

4.

Gaspare Pacchierotti visited London on several occasions between 1778 and 1791.

5.

Gaspare Pacchierotti's voice was an extensive soprano, full and sweet in the highest degree: his powers of execution were great, but he had far too good taste and good sense to make a display of them where it would have been misapplied,.

6.

Gaspare Pacchierotti's recitative was inimitably fine, so that even those who did not understand the language could not fail to comprehend, from his countenance, voice and action, every sentiment he expressed.

7.

Gaspare Pacchierotti was unpresuming in his manners, grateful and attached to all his numerous friends and patrons.

8.

Gaspare Pacchierotti had met Beckford in 1780 at Lucca, during the young aristocrat's grand tour, and the following year he became involved in a performance marking that dissolute young nobleman's twenty-first birthday.

9.

Gaspare Pacchierotti's last visit to London in 1791 has become famous to posterity for his numerous performances of Haydn's cantata Arianna a Naxos to the composer's own piano accompaniment.

10.

Never reconciled to the destruction of his beloved Venetian Republic by the French, Gaspare Pacchierotti's patriotism got him into trouble.

11.

Famous even in retirement, Gaspare Pacchierotti was visited by many well-known figures, including Rossini.

12.

Gaspare Pacchierotti last sang in public on 19 October 1817, at the age of seventy-seven, performing a motet in the church of Mirano, a few miles west of Venice.

13.

Gaspare Pacchierotti showed us into a long narrow room, in which was a large slender harpsichord.

14.

Stricken by dropsy, Gaspare Pacchierotti died at the age of eighty-one.

15.

Gaspare Pacchierotti's grave was recently discovered in an ancient oratory adjoining Villa Pacchierotti-Zemella in Padua.