Luigia Polzelli - Musical Influence On Haydn

Musical Influence On Haydn

Polzelli had an important influence on Haydn's musical output, for a somewhat negative reason: despite frequent tutoring from Haydn, she often had trouble with difficult parts. An important part of Haydn's job at Eszterháza was to put on productions of operas by other composers. Where arias assigned to Luigia were too difficult for her to sing, Haydn wrote so-called "insertion arias" for her, replacing the originals in performance. According to Jones there were at least five such arias; possibly as many as ten; he describes them as follows.

She was most comfortable with syllabic settings that avoided decoration, shortish phrases that did not demand sophisticated breathing, a vocal range that did not stray much on either side of the stave and with an accompaniment that doubled the voice rather than allowed it to compete with the orchestra. This may have been how Haydn managed to keep Polzelli on stage without revealing her limitations but, conveniently, they were also techniques habitually associated with the musical characterization of the roles allotted to Polzelli, the maids and peasants of comic opera.

Haydn wrote a considerable number of operas himself (see List of operas by Joseph Haydn), but only twice assigned Luigia a role (Silvia in L'isola disabitata and Lisetta in La vera costanza).