The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century.
Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the Castrato and his Wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time..
Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before.
There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts.
Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man.
She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel.
Tenducci\'s Wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl.
There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly.
His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him.
Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible.
He was also a castrato.
He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following.
Bach both composed for him.
C.
Mozart and J.
In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London\'s pleasure gardens.
The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century
