New Light on the Baroness

In the early years of the eighteenth century four female star singers made their debuts on the London stage: the Baroness, Margherita de L'Epine, Maria Gallia and Catherine Tofts. They performed in concerts and sang between the acts of plays at London's two theatres, Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, and later vied for parts in the early all-sung operas in the Italian style. While much has been written about L'Epine and Tofts and the supposed rivalry between them, the Baroness has almost been ignored, although she was probably the first of these singers to appear in London.¹ She had a longer English career than either Gallia or Tofts, and apart from a brief return to the continent she lived in London until her death in 1724.

Her first public appearance in England was on 3 November 1702 at York Buildings, London's principal concert venue. The performers were given as "an Italian Gentlewoman that was never heard in this Kingdom before, and Signior Casparini, the famous Musician that plays on the violin, newly come from Rome" (London Gazette, 29 Oct.–2 Nov. 1702). "Casparini" was the violinist Gasparo Visconti, generally known in England as Gasperini. The "Italian Gentlewoman" cannot have been Maria Gallia, who did not make her London debut until 1 June 1703 (Daily Courant, 31 May 1703), and the singer has generally been assumed to be Margherita de L'Epine, who was appearing at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in the winter of 1702–03. However, "an Italian Gentlewoman" seems an inadequate description of L'Epine, who came to England as an established star after singing in Venice, and besides, in her London appearances at this time L'Epine was accompanied by the composer and harpsichordist Jakob Greber and sang his music. Indeed she may well have been married to him, for in October 1704, their daughter, Marie Anne Greber, was baptised at the French Catholic Chapel in Amsterdam.² It is therefore significant that Greber was not involved in the York Buildings concert, where the leading instrumentalist was Gasperini, and so the singer there must have been the Baroness, not L'Epine.

There was a similar York Buildings concert a month later, with "New Songs by the Gentlewoman, and Symphonies by Signior Gasparine" (Daily Courant, 3 Dec. 1702), and the singer appeared again with Gasperini on 23 January 1703 in a concert at Drury Lane Theatre, when Gasperini acted as accompanist for Italian and French songs composed by Saggione, the name by which Giuseppe Fedeli was usually known. Here the singer was named as "the Famous Signiora Joanna Maria Lindehleim" (Daily Courant, 20 Jan. 1703) but merely as "the famous Signiora Joanna Maria" in the newspaper advertisement on the following day. From the wordbook and published songs of the opera Camilla, in which she sang in 1706, it is clear that Signiora Joanna Maria was the singer who by then was calling herself the Baroness. It can therefore be assumed with some confidence that the Baroness made her London debut on 3 November 1702.

The name "Lindehleim", which appeared in the first newspaper advertisement for the January 1703 concert and nowhere else, seemed so unlikely that Alfred Loewenberg, in the fifth edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954), speculated that the name was "Lindelheim", and that has been widely accepted as fact. To complicate matters further, unknown to Loewenberg, the singer was buried as "The Right Hon.^ble Mary Baroness of Linchenham" (perhaps from a misreading of "d" as "ch"). However, a series of entries in the baptismal and burial registers of St Margaret's Westminster shed new light on this mysterious singer, and indicate that the name was Lendenheim. These are the relevant entries:

12 June 1702, Baptism: Andrew Lenduss to And^ew by Mary

29 June 1702, Burial: Andrew Lendenheim

26 March 1704, Baptism: Andrew Lenduss to And^ew ["(a Swedish Baron)" inserted above] by [no name entered]

27 March 1704, Burial: Andrew Lendenheim C[hild]: Swedish Baron

4 February 1705/06, Baptism: Andrew Lenduss to the R^t. Hon...