Los inicios de Lorenza Correa en Madrid: Su formación y desarrollo como actriz de cantado a partir del primer repertorio conocido (1787–94)

Abstract

The soprano Lorenza Correa (1773[?]–after July 1832) belonged to the first generation of Spanish singers who developed a prominent career abroad. But, unlike Manuel García’s and Isabel Colbran’s cases, there are no studies on her. In order to begin to fill this gap, the objective of this essay is to study Correa’s process of training, development, and consolidation as a singing actress in the initial years of her professional career and how it contributed to her later international success. As such I analyze the repertory performed by her in the public theaters of Madrid from 1787, the moment in which she joined the Madrilenian companies as an eleventh lady, up until 1794, when she became third dama de cantado, the main singer of tonadillas. Throughout this analysis I observe that she rapidly excelled as a singer thanks to her exceptional natural vocal skills and her training with music and singing teachers such as Pablo del Moral and probably Carlo Marinelli. Besides this, her experience in the public theaters of Madrid provided her a versatile training in a wide variety of registers: from spoken theater to sung performance, from serious to comic styles, and from Italian opera to autochthonous airs with folk flavor, even playing the guitar. Moreover, from this context one can infer a notable singing level in some Spanish actors, as well as an important value of tonadillas as an excellent training tool for singing actors.