Maria Brizzi Giorgi: 250 years after the birth of the talented young musician

After an eternally long silence, people in the city are once again talking about a female musician, Maria Brizzi Giorgi. Alive on the cusp of the 18th and 19th centuries, she was a leading figure in the Bolognese musical world. She discovered the very young and talented Gioachino Rossini and helped guide him to the career for which he is famed.

A portrait of her and some of her works are kept at the International Museum and Music Library of Bologna in Strada Maggiore, which is located inside component part 10 of our serial property.

We are delighted to talk about her with Loris Rabiti, who has the merit of having rediscovered and brought her to public knowledge after such a long silence. Can you tell us how it all happened?

Maria Brizzi Giorgi was a Bolognese musician, a composer, a virtuoso of the harpsichord and the forte-piano, and had a particular talent for musical improvisation. Born in Bologna on 7 August 1775, she lived for thirty-six years, dying in childbirth on 7 January 1812.

I came upon her by chance: I was walking through a market, when I noticed a small manuscript music score on a stall. The title was “Marcia della Cittadina Giorgi” and I immediately bought it. A woman musician who composed military marches in revolutionary times had to be an interesting character. When I got back to the bookshop (I am an antique bookseller), I began my research: behind the name "Cittadina Giorgi" was the figure of Maria Brizzi Giorgi. It didn't take long to find out about her, because she was rather famous in her time. So there are reviews of her concerts, poetic verses dedicated to her, celebratory texts during her life and commemorative texts after her death. Initially, I was struck by two historical sources: the note about her in the Biographical Dictionary of the Italians, saying that all her music had been lost. So at that time I thought I could commercially exploit this rediscovery, as well as the text of the "Elogio”, written by Pietro Giordani after her death, on behalf of the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna. In the emphasis used by Giordani to describe her merits, I sensed that she was the equivalent of some of the musical divas of our own time, people who today set trends and fill stadiums. Is it possible that a woman famous for her publicly acknowledged artistic merits, which were spoken of in those terms, did not yet have a dedicated monograph in 2011? Is it possible that her "Wikipedia" page has only six lines of text, with almost all the dates wrong? Of course, I found her mentioned in many texts on Rossini or that historical period in Bologna, because when alive she had had so much "press" that ignoring her would have been impossible; but she always emerged in a blurred way to say the least.

A young woman in a mostly male-led society: how could she have been given so much space? Perhaps because of her exceptional talent?

She had been a child prodigy in a family of musicians. Her father, a barber in the service of the Albergati family, was also a skilled horn player, while two of her older brothers, in particular Antonio Giovanni Maria Brizzi, were very successful singers. At the age of twelve she became a choir leader and first organist in a convent near the city of Ancona. Returning to Bologna after a period of assiduous musical studies, she married the lawyer Luigi Giorgi, a fervent "revolutionary", in 1794.

Contemporaries speak of her as an amazing talent, a beautiful and determined girl, possessed of a passionate, charismatic and seductive temperament, with "flashing black eyes". She had a beautiful voice, but a fragile physique prevented her from embarking on a singing career, so she gave herself entirely to the study of instruments and composition, in order to live from music.

And then I found the score of her “Jacobin March” and came into possession of the only known copy of the poster of January 1797, which describes the event in which she shone, composing an "Hymn to General Bonaparte". She performed it in the presence of Napoleon himself and his family, thus embodying the incredible role of "representative musician" of the Municipality. The only testimony of her public renown was in the articles that appeared in the newspapers of the time and in the words of Pietro Giordani, who wrote in his "Elogio": "Beautiful it was to see for two years the Bolognese army marching to the music of a beautiful young woman of twenty; beautiful it was to hear that her music saluted the first feats of the Italian militia".

She was a talented artist "recognised" by peers long before she established herself publicly in the revolutionary field. Personally, I believe that, just as the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799 saw Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca as a key intellectual and political figure, so Bologna saw Giorgi rise and go on to compose and personally perform the anthems for the most important institutional ceremonies and to set to music the patriotic marches that accompanied the street processions of the first soldiers dressed in tricolour, under the newly unfurled Italian flag.

And yet she was the first woman "representative musician" of a city, the first woman musician to publicly lead a military band, the first woman to hold the position of "musical director" in a theatre and the first woman to found and lead a musical academy. Moreover, almost certainly, she was also the first woman to organise a concert at the Imperial Court in Vienna and the first to organise musical gatherings for the establishment of a governing authority (spring 1805, in Rijeka, for the establishment of the Imperial Chamberlain). The first Chamber Music concert of which we have a review, in the Chronology of Shows of the Municipal Theatre of Bologna, is an event that she organised and starred in.

What works do you think are worth listening to again? Are there any opportunities to hear them?

Apart from the "Marcia della Cittadina Giorgi" that I found, only one of her compositions has survived. Between March and April of 1811, Maria performed as a duo with Niccolò Paganini in two distinct concerts: the first at the Nuova Società del Casino, the second at the Municipal Theatre. We have the review of the first, and we have the press announcement of the performance of the second, intended for a wider and more popular audience.

The two virtuosos played in turn their variations composed on the spot, challenging each other on the notes of the aria "Nel Cor più non siento” from Giovanni Paisiello's "Molinara". After those performances, Maria disappeared from public view as a very difficult pregnancy caused her to take to her bed. Recounting the last days of her life, Pietro Giordani tells us how one day she suddenly got up to go to the piano. She asked her teenage daughter Teresa, a budding musical talent, to transcribe the music she would play. The daughter set to her task and Maria improvised some variations on the same aria she had played in her concerts with Paganini. That music has come down to us as the only evidence of Maria Brizzi Giorgi's talent as an improviser. The piece is entitled "Squarci di musica suonati abrupto...”, and today allows us to relive the concerts with which Maria Brizzi Giorgi and Niccolò Paganini had thrilled the Bolognese public in the spring of 1811.

Her importance in the Bolognese music scene of the period meant that the most important newspapers of the time wrote about her; so we have dozens of reviews and concert programmes that could allow us to effectively replicate the musical environment that enveloped the adolescent Rossini in the years of his Bolognese training (the fourteen-year-old Rossini sang at a great concert at the Polinniaca Academy on 31 July 1806 and performed in the closing vocal trio). Maria Brizzi Giorgi also has the merit of having enabled the soprano Isabella Colbran to make her debut in Italy in 1807, and of having conceived and packaged the musical evening that in December 1808 allowed the sixteen-year-old Gioachino Rossini to perform to a very select audience. The piece in question was his "Symphony in D major (also known as the "Symphony of Bologna")", which he composed for the occasion, earning himself his first ever printed review as a composer. Isabella Colbran, Francesco Sampieri, Matteo Babbini, Niccolò Paganini, Antonio Zoboli, Luigi Zamboni (the future first "Figaro"), Giuseppe Boschetti, Adelaide Malanotte, Elisabetta Manfredini, Filippo Galli, Francesca Festa Maffei, Geltrude Righetti (later Geltrude Righetti Giorgi), Ferdinando Paer, Ottavio Bossi, Giuseppe Pilotti, Marianna Gafforini Zamboni, Gian Battista Giusti, Giovanni Riario Sforza, Marquis of Montrone, Cornelia Rossi Martinetti, Baldassarre Centroni, Auguste Louis Blondeau, etc. These are some of the names that touched the career of Maria Brizzi Giorgi and enlivened her musical evenings at the time when the very young Gioachino Rossini was training and when her documented appearances took place at the Polinniaca Academy. This information alone should suffice to give an idea of the artistic importance of the milieu that Maria Brizzi Giorgi's charisma generated around her and how this could have been a source of nourishment for the young genius from Pesaro.

You have written a book about the story of Maria Brizzi Giorgi and you also have the merit of having identified her hitherto anonymous portrait in the Museum of Music. How did you do it? 

I had read Francesco Tognetti’s long and poignant article on the death of Maria Brizzi Giorgi, published in the "Giornale del Dipartimento del Reno" of 14 January 1812. The writer reveals at some point that "Filippo Gargagli" (Filippo Gargalli) had painted a portrait of her in 1806, after she joined the Philharmonic Academy. With this knowledge I went to the Museum of Music hoping to see it, but the portrait was not there: the only image of her was a small copper-engraved portrait, dating back to the early 19th century. A little later, however, the museum's librarian Alfredo Vitolo emailed me the photographs of the female portraits present, but not yet identified. I thus identified Maria Brizzi Giorgi in the portrait listed as "unknown lute player by an anonymous artist". Following my indication, the experts launched further investigations, which then confirmed the identification.

It is an unusual portrait, because behind the musician, an angel pops up, holding a sheet music score and indicating with a finger the absence of notes in the musical notation: it is her way of informing us that the musician is a “impromptu” composer. The angel is used here as an allegorical attribute, a pictorial device customary in the iconography of the saints, but much more unusual in 19th century music portraiture.

How could this talented woman have been forgotten?

She was certainly a problematic character of the Napoleonic era: famous and celebrated, but precisely for this reason she was also divisive. Pietro Giordani hesitated for a moment when the Philharmonic Academy commissioned the eulogy, but then decided to honour it because Giorgi deserved it and because he preferred to give comfort to those who had loved and appreciated her, rather than give weight to the detractors. At her death, slanderous gossip circulated concerning her pregnancy as well as the scandal she had caused by openly celebrating the political authorities and military triumphs musically, and assuming roles of great public visibility. Rumour had it that in 1806, a French officer had taken his own life for her. I am not sure, however, that her consignment to oblivion was due only to a form of "damnatio memoriae", because Pietro Giordani's eulogy was very widespread throughout the 19th century, to the point that until the early 20th century it appeared, in an abridged form, in books that summarised the biographies of exemplary women. In my opinion, it was merely because her role had been underestimated by historians. Various assumptions could be made about why this is the case, but I think it is better to deal with the change taking place today.

To conclude: Maria Brizzi Giorgi was a successful musician who enjoyed success herself and fulfilment in her time, but who died prematurely, in the prime of her life. She was acclaimed by a wide audience (but also envied and slandered, just like any real "diva"), appreciated by fellow musicians, by the press, by writers and poets and by the authorities. She founded a genuine music academy, which she managed by procuring a space adjacent to her home, suitable for musical performances and large enough to accommodate a large audience and host the post-concert dances in which spectators also participated. The printed descriptions portray an institution protected by political power, supported by members and financiers, with an organisational team that included a president, a director, a staff of musicians and singers, who were also often referred to as "polinniac academics".

Her audience partly included the people who frequented the most important city salons, but hers was certainly not a salon: it was a place of music, of music in step with the times, where the most important virtuosos of the various instruments tried their hand at daring and unpublished "duets", and where the most fashionable authors in European music, such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Cimarosa, Paisiello, etc., were performed, and where both young local talents and famous musicians and singers also appeared.

The Polinniaca Academy was active between 1806 and 1809 and closed its doors following the birth of the "Nuova Società del Casino", an important and exclusive institution of which Luigi Giorgi was a co-founder. Maria took on the role of director of the musical evenings, together with Francesco Sampieri and Teresa Albergati.

Maria Brizzi Giorgi died on 7 January 1812, giving birth to her third son, Eugenio, who survived her. An orchestra of over a hundred musicians played at her funeral, which was attended by practically the whole city. Five other solemn musical ceremonies in her memory were noted by the chronicles of that year. They were organised respectively by her family, the Nuova Società del Casino, the musician Pietro Vimercati, the Concordi Academy and the Philharmonic Academy.

Her husband Luigi Giorgi remarried in 1814. His new wife was a young singer, Geltrude Righetti. In 1816 and 1817, Geltrude Righetti (Giorgi) became the first absolute interpreter of two of Rossini's great masterpieces: "The Barber of Seville" and "Cenerentola". The close links between the Giorgi and Rossini did therefore not come to a close in the short, luminous rise and fall of "Polymnia", rather...

For further information:

Loris Rabiti, Il tocco di Polimnia. Maria Brizzi Giorgi, musicista, musa e mentore del giovane Rossini, introduzione di Antonio Castronuovo, Bologna, Pendragon, 2021

Stefania Graziosi, Musica maestra! Maria Brizzi Giorgi, musicista rivoluzionaria al tempo di Napoleone e di Rossini, illustrazioni di Iris Biasio, Bologna, Minerva 2024

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Brizzi_Giorgi

https://www.storiaememoriadibologna.it/archivio/persone/brizzi-giorgi-maria