ABSTRACT
The sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni are known, one might say stigmatized, as the Rival Queens of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Cuzzoni's and Bordoni's shared London engagement is usually thought of as unique, but in fact the two singers had shared the stage on several occasions beforehand in Italy. The working environment of an opera theatre was a place of constant negotiation, and, needs to rectify our image of the dictatorship of the two sopranos over the librettists and composers, the notion that Bordoni and Cuzzoni were manipulated must be reconsidered. In fact, the press entertained itself by naming the sopranos either 'The Rival Queens' or 'The Rival Queans', the latter version deriving from the title of Colley Cibber's burlesque on the Lee's tragedy. The myth that the audience knew the plot of Alessandro from The Rival Queens has been perpetuated in some modern scholarship.
