La sirena antica dell’Adriatico: Caterina Porri, a Seventeenth-Century Roman Prima Donna on the Stages of Venice, Bologna, and Pavia

This chapter explores the life and career of one of the women, Caterina Porri, who sang on the stages of Italy for nearly three decades during the mid-seventeenth century. Porri's situation, and the choices she made, will be brought into focus through a look at some of her female predecessors in Venice. The view of mid -seicento opera singers, and their connection with Venetian opera, has largely been colored by impressions gathered from letters written to the impresario Marco Faustini and housed in the Archivio di Stato in Venice. On 26 September Porri authorized the Venetian nobleman Antonio Maria Surian to handle various aspects of her financial affairs in Venice, a sign that she and her husband had made preparations to leave the city. It would seem that Surian had become Porri's chief protector and ally, someone who supported her and her family in moments of transition.