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Vittoria Tesi Tramontini, also known as "La Fiorentina" or "La Moretta" (the Florentine or the Moorish or brunette girl) (13 February 1701The baptismal act (Opera di S. Maria del Fiore, Archivio delle fedi di battesimo di S. Giovanni, reg. 295, c. 84v; referred to by Francesco Lora) reads 13 February 1700 and this date is generally reported by major sources. However, it is formulated according to the Florentine calendar then in use in most Tuscany (where every new year began on 25 Mars, the day of the Incarnation), and corresponds in fact to 13 February 1701 in the Gregorian calendar-modern style (where every new year begins on 1 January). Thus it is now stated by the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. in Florence – 9 May 1775 in Vienna) was an Italian opera singer (later singing teacher) of the 18th century. Her vocal range was that of a contralto. She is "regarded as the first eminent singer of color in the history of Western music". (Dinko Fabris, Serenata Hasse al Sannazaro in concerto la "Cappella Neapolitana", «la Repubblica», 30 gennaio 2019).
Her career peaked in the late 1730s and in 1740s, when she sang alongside such singers as Caffarelli and Angelo Amorevoli. In 1737 she participated in the inauguration of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, assuming the travesti title role in Domenico Sarro's Achille in Sciro; in 1744 she performed the title role in Gluck's Ipermestra at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice and in 1747 she took her leave of Italian audiences, appearing at the Naples court and the Teatro San Carlo in the festa teatrale Il sogno di Olimpia by Giuseppe de Majo, opposite Caffarelli, Gizziello and Giovanni Manzuoli. The following year she moved to Vienna, where she debuted at the inauguration of the new Burgtheater in the title role in Gluck's Semiramide riconosciuta, set to a libretto by Metastasio. Metastasio, who had been absent from Italy since 1730 and therefore had no recent direct experience of her performances, was amazed, and in a letter to his colleague Giovanni Claudio Pasquini, he wrote: "Tesi plays in a way that surprised me, as well as the whole humanity in Vienna, of either of the two sexes".Letter to Giovanni Claudio Pasquini, 29 June 1748, in Raccolta di lettere scientifiche, familiari, e giocose dell'abate Pietro Metastasio romano, Rome, at the expence of Pietro Puccinelli, s.d., III, p. 338 (accessible online at Google Books).
After further successful appearances at the Burgtheater in the latter half of 1748 and in 1749 (among others, in Niccolò Jommelli's Achille in Sciro and Didone abbandonata, both set to Metastasian libretti), and after having undergone a real tour de force of four new operas and two in 1750, Tesi began to retire from her professional singing career. In 1751 she was reported by Metastasio to be serving as the costume director at the Viennese theatre and in 1754 she appeared on stage - probably for the last time - as Lisinga in the premiere of Gluck's one-act opera Le cinesi, at Engelhartstetten, in the Schloss Hof, on the occasion of a visit of the imperial couple. The Hof was the country residence of Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen, a leading figure in the Habsburg court, in whose Vienna palace (Palais Rosenkavalier, today's Palais Auersperg) she permanently dwelled, after auctioning in 1753 all the movable property of her Florence home. "There she regularly took part in private concerts under the direction of the Prince's capellmeister Giuseppe Bonno. The Prince had offered Tesi a salary for staying in his household, but she refused to be paid and declined every present the Prince wished to give her." Lorenz. She taught singing there, having among her pupils Caterina Gabrielli and Elisabeth Teyber (1744–1816), and she would heartily receive personalities, such as Casanova or the Mozarts (Leopold Mozart and 6-year-old son), who passed through Vienna and wished to pay homage to the old primadonna living at the Prince Saxe-Hildburghausen's.
Tesi died of pneumonia on 9 May 1775. She was exceedingly rich and in accordance with her last will, she was buried in the crypt of the Capuchin Church at the Neuer Markt, having provided a Mass endowment fund of 1,000 florins for the annexed Capuchin Convent.
Notwithstanding, it was in fact as a 'singer-actress' — to put it in modern terms — that she went down in history: "the first 'divina' in the contralto clef", as she has been recently called. Rodolfo Celletti, La grana della voce. Opere, direttori e cantanti, 2ª edizione, Roma, Baldini & Castoldi, 2000, p. 238 According to Stefano Arteaga and the aforementioned Mancini, in particular, who both wrote around the time of her death, she was the century's greatest operatic actress, Arteaga, Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano dalla sua origine fino al presente, Bologna, Trenti, 1785, II, p. 43. and her theatrical skills, either natural or acquired through hard study and training, were such that no other actress could ever emerge on the opera stage to surpass or even just equal her.
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