Archive Item of the Month – December 2021
Gaetano Crivelli (Brescia, 1768 – Brescia, 1836)
The Italian tenor Gaetano Crivelli made his debut in 1794 in his home town of Brescia. He sang throughout Italy and studied with Giuseppe Aprile (1732-1813) who was also a teacher of the Irish tenor Michael Kelly (1762-1826) amongst many other famous singers of the period. Crivelli sang in the first performance in Italy of W.A. Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (KV 621) in 1809 at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. After a period singing in Paris, from 1811, he performed in London during the 1817-1818 season at the King’s Theatre, in which he sang in Cimarosa’s Penelope, Paer’s Griselda, and in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and La clemenza di Tito, as well as the first London performance of Don Giovanni.
The portrait of Crivelli is almost certainly from this time when he was in London, considering the British artist and provenance of the portrait. Crivelli is depicted full length, in the character of the Emperor Titus in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, dressed as the Roman governor seated at a table, clutching a scroll of paper, with helmet and weaponry cast aside, column, statue and drapes in the background. It is a role for which he was cast many times and of which printed images were made by various artists.
Gaetano Crivelli, oil on canvas by John Partridge (1789-1872); 1817 or 1818.
Donated by either William Anthony Greatorex (1792-1862) or Thomas Greatorex (1800-1880, Member A316), 1857.
The Minutes of 1 March 1857 read “A letter from Mr W.A. Greatorex was read presenting the portrait of Sigr Crevelli [sic] the elder, to the Society. Resolved that the same be accepted with thanks”. Some time later, the Minutes of 3 December 1876 record the donor as a different member of the Greatorex family, (William Anthony being deceased by 1876): “Letter read from Mr Greatorex the donor of the Pictures of Sig. Crivelli & his father, complaining of the positions in which they were placed in the Society’s rooms. The Secretary to explain that the Board would take care when rearranging the Pictures to attend to Mr. Greatorex [’s] wishes, and Mr Cummings [*] undertook to have tablets made recording the circumstances under which the Society became possessors of them”. Thomas and William Anthony were both children of Thomas Greatorex (1758-1831) a former organist of Westminster Abbey.
* William Hayman Cummings, see archive item of the month of June 2020
Further literature
Emanuele Senici, ‘Adapted to the Modern Stage’: “La clemenza di Tito” in London, in Cambridge Opera Journal, vol.7, no. 1 (March, 1995), pp.1-22
