Tenducci in Ireland
The Irish Baroque Orchestra turns 30 this year and The Lyric Feature is marking the occasion with rebroadcasts of programmes we’ve made inspired by their projects and scored by their performances.
Georgian Dublin, busy and cosmopolitan, attracted performers, artists, and craftspeople from across Europe. In 1765, the city saw the arrival of one of the most celebrated musicians of the day: the singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci. The Irish Baroque Orchestra’s recent release ‘The Trials of Tenducci’ has brought this artist to life through the music he either performed or could have heard.
Tenducci’s star quality excited everyone who heard him, including such well-known contemporaries as Mozart and J.C. Bach. As a castrato, his unnaturally high voice set him apart in more ways than one. On the one hand he was a celebrity, a figure taking centre-stage in the great opera houses and pleasure gardens, and a prestigious addition to aristocratic soirées. However, in other contexts his identity made him a social outlier, unable even to marry or own property in his native Italy – or, it seems, further afield. Within a year of his arrival in Ireland, he risked notoriety and even imprisonment with a scandalous and short-lived marriage to his former pupil, the teen-aged Dorothea Maunsell. Tenducci’s life, mixing defiance with virtuoso artistry, brings us closer to the world of his time, as the rich culture of the Baroque began to show its darker side.
In this Lyric Feature, Michael Lee goes behind the scenes of this recording to take a closer look at Tenducci’s story, his music, and the Ireland he encountered when he performed in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, with contributions by musical director Peter Whelan and mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, along with academics Alison Fitzgerald and Susan O’Regan.
Written and presented by Michael Lee
Produced by Michael Lee and Eoin O Kelly
(First broadcast 10th October 2021)
RTÉ lyric fm, Sunday 5th April, 6pm-7pm
