ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the life and career of Caterina Porri, who sang on the stages of Italy for nearly three decades during the mid-seventeenth century. Female singers and opera did not follow equal evolutionary paths. Some parts of Italy, however, were more receptive to the idea of women on the public stage. It was in Venice, with the institution of public opera in 1637, that women began their ascent to the status of prima donna. Bortolo Caresana had married a young woman on her way to becoming one of the leading prima donnas in Venice. During the second year of their marriage she traveled to Bologna to perform in Aurelio Aureli and Francesco Cavalli's Erismena, an opera that had premiered the previous carnival in Venice, but with two other Roman women, Curti and Chiusi, portraying the lead roles. Three years later, in 1684, she performed the title role in Domenico Freschi's Olimpia vendicata in Pavia, not far from Milan.
