The biography of the celebrated actress known as Aurelia (c. 1613-1704) spans most of the 17th century. Her origins have eluded scholars of music and theater history, but it has been assumed that she belonged to the Italian acting troupe known as the Fedeli that came to France in the early years of the 17th century. Her professional and familial allegiances explain the plethora of names under which she published and performed. She claimed that she entertained the French court “as a child” (“già fanciulla”) in the commedia dell’arte, but most accounts place her and the actor Scaramouche (Tiberio Fiorilli) in France in the late 1630s. While the identity of her first husband remains mysterious, we gather that by 1633—the year of the birth of her only child, Marc’Antonio Romagnesi—she had married her second husband, Augustin Romagnesi of Mantua. The following year, a rapturous audience member wrote about her singing and acting in Genoa:
Comm’un Giove in tri de’ do sommo
choro,
così in talenti, in gratia, in dote canto
fra ri comici Aurelia và un tesoro.
Ben l’è unna donna d’oro,
s’infin ro nomme mostra à ra
desteisa
ch’insomma à và tant’oro quant’a
peisa.
Like a triple Jove in the supreme
choir,
With such talents, grace, and the gift
of song,
Aurelia is worth a fortune among the
comedians.
Good is she, a woman of gold,
In short, the name shows the same
thing
So that, all in all, she is worth her
weight in gold. |
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