GAETANO GUADAGNI. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MANUSCRIPT OF "DUETTI DIVERSI", POSSIBLY VIENNA, 1760S OR 1770S

"Libro Duetti e Terze[tti]; dell'Illmo S[igno]r K[avali]er Gaetano Guadagni", with the title page "Duetti diversi", including 22 numbered duets mainly for two sopranos and continuo, a few for soprano and alto, notated on up to nine staves per page,  including 'Ti lascio amata Clori', 'L’alma da lacci sciogliere' (by Hasse), ' Se vi dicessi ch’io sono amante' (arietta for soprano and continuo), 'Se amor per me non senti' (by Jommelli), 'Semplicette pastorelle', 'Or che del bel mattino', and several "Terzetti diversi", including 'Pastorella al colle al prato' (Metastasio), 'Ahi che l’un de Geni nostri' (Cesarotti) and many others, 143 pages, small oblong 4to, 16 x 22.5cm, 10-stave paper with ruled margins, watermarks of 3 hats above letter M and 3 crescent moons etc, contemporary mottled calf, gilt border flowers to corners, early ownership inscription ("Mrs G. Ellis, Sunning Hill near Staines"), possibly Viennese provenance (third quarter of the eighteenth century?), with a few nineteenth-century additions at the end of the manuscript.

Both 'Ti lascio amata Clori', attributed to Guadagni, and 'Se amor per me non senti' (anonymous), are in Montcassino, Biblioteca dell'Abbazia 6-D-14 (see RISM A/II 852035204); see also 'Pastorella al colle al prato' cf RISM 212008670 (Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek Mus.1-F-49,11-1 and Brussels, Bibliothèque royale Ms III 1587 Mus, attributed to "Tento").

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Gaetano Guadagni was one of the greatest Italian castrati, whose career took him to Venice, London in 1750 (where Handel composed new arias for him in Messiah), Vienna in 1762-1765 (where he created Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice), Padua and Munich.  Music by Guadagni is rare, although he contributed to pasticcios in London, including the aria 'Men tiranne' (inserted in Gluck's Orfeo at Munich in 1773) and 'Pensa a serbarmi o cara' (a setting of Metastasio's Ezio). The duet 'Ti Lascio amata Clori' exists in a manuscript at Montecassino with an attribution to Guadagni and in the same key of D major; in three other sources it is anonymous and in different keys. Most of the other vocal duets and trios in this manuscript are apparently unknown, although RISM records a copy of 'Se amor per me non senti' in Montecassino, where it is anonymous, and two copies of 'Pastorella al colle al prato' transposed up to F major, in Dresden and Brussels, but attributed to Mattia Vento (or "Tento"). The watermark and the attribution to Guadagni on the cover suggest a Viennese or Munich provenance is possible.    The ownership inscription "Mrs G. Ellis", is probably by Anne, wife of George Ellis (1753-1815) of Sunninghill, the friend of Sir Walter Scott and George Canning.