A “Most Enchanting Comic Actress”1: Giovanna Sestini, an Italian Opera Singer in the London Theatres

Signora Sestini as the Muse Terpsichore by Ozias Humphry (1742–1810), ca 1780. Private Collection. All rights reserved. Oil, 74 cm h × 62 cm w.

Late in 1774 a young couple and their two young sons arrived in England from Portugal to start a new life; they took lodgings in Oxendon Street, close to London’s Haymarket. The husband was José Christiano Stocqueler, whose distinguished Portuguese family had strongly disapproved when he married a beautiful Italian opera singer, Giovanna Sestini. She now had a contract to sing at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket and professionally was always known as Sestini, though in private life she was Joanna Stocqueler.²

She was born in Italy in 1749, and must have shown early promise as her first known performance was in 1763 when at the Pubblico Teatro di Lucca she sang the part of Lucilla in Il cavalier mignatta, an intermezzo for three voices (Rinaldo). The baptismal register of Lastra a Signa, a small town some 12 km west of Florence, indicates that Giovanna was the youngest of twelve children of Pietro and Altomira Sestini (Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile di Firenze). She was billed as ‘di Firenze’ both in Lucca and in Florence where she and her sister Anna sang in Niccolò Piccinni’s La buona moglie at the Teatro di Via Cocomero in 1765 (Weaver and Weaver 213). Before moving to Portugal in 1768, they travelled within Italy performing in cities such as to Padua and Venice (italianOpera). Giovanna always took more demanding roles than Anna and she gained acclaim in Lisbon where the new Teatro da Rua dos Condes was re-establishing the vogue for Italian opera after the devastating earthquake of 1755 (de Brito 90–99). After the Carnival performances in Lisbon in 1774 Sestini decided to join the King’s Theatre in London as their prima buffa, or first woman in the comic opera. It cannot have been easy at first for the Stocquelers knew no English, he had no work to go to, and Roman Catholics were not welcome in London. Nonetheless they settled there and together raised a large English family. Giovanna Sestini became a popular singer, first in Italian opera but later taking English roles (Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans 263–67). The London press followed her career in opera and as a concert artiste closely until she retired in 1792 when, like so many celebrities, she was quickly forgotten. Altogether Sestini sang in some fifty different operas and her contribution to the theatre scene – in London in particular – deserves to be better recognised.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket was the fashionable Opera House where society met on Tuesday and Saturday evenings (Nalbach). Built in 1705 by Sir John Vanbrugh as an opera house, it had for many years received a licence to perform only opera in Italian. This meant less competition for Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres that could also put on straight plays and any musical works. Audiences at the King’s Theatre were critical of the quality of the singers and productions were expected to be lavish with elaborate sets and costumes. Each season ran roughly from November to May to coincide with the sitting of Parliament. And with expenses often exceeding income, Opera House managers were frequently in financial difficulty. In 1773 the consortium of Richard and Mary Ann Yates and Frances Brooke and her brother-in-law James Brooke, two couples with assorted theatrical experience between them, took over and set out to revive the fortunes of the King’s Theatre (Nalbach 48–49). Frances Brooke was a forceful woman who immediately applied, unsuccessfully, for the restrictive licence to be lifted. She had hoped occasionally to use the theatre to stage plays she had herself written, but had to accept defeat at the hands of the Lord Chamberlain. They were still limited to Italian opera, and full houses needed to be attracted if the consortium were...