Versão portuguesa aqui.
Luisa Todi! Her story is very interesting and sad… the end deserved more glory...
Born in a family of few resources, she became rich and famous! It was idolized! As a child, she was saved from being buried alive because she hid inside a bread oven! As an adult, she was saved from drowning in the Douro because an oar reached her and she clung to it!
After living with kings and emperors all over Europe, she died poor, in Lisbon, and her tomb is forgotten, under the foundations of a building in Rua do Alecrim.
By marriage she had acquired the surname by which she would become known: Todi.
Luísa was the third daughter of a modest music teacher who, with 5 mouths to feed, decided to leave the city of Setúbal and go to Lisbon, where she found work as an orchestra copyist at the Bairro Alto theatre.
Born in 1753, it is said that she was saved from the 1755 earthquake by hiding inside a bread oven that served as protection.
With the arrival of her father in Lisbon, Luísa and her 2 sisters get to know the theatre environment and are dazzled by it. They all will become actresses and singers of the first magnitude!
Luísa debuts in a small role of Tartufo by Moliére, while her sister, Cecília, has the main role.
With the coming to Lisbon of an Italian Opera company, Luísa and the 1st violin of the respective Orchestra fell in love and got married. Thus Luísa took the nickname of her husband, Saverio Todi!
After a period of 6 years residing in Porto, with the preparation obtained by intense singing lessons and many performances, he began his career outside the country.
First in London, still somewhat immature and with very limited success, but later in Spain and Paris, where he triumphed.
There, in Paris, he took part in the Spiritual Concerts, which were regularly held at the Tuileries Palace and, right at his first presentation, made such an impression that the news spread like wildfire in French high society, which flocked en masse to the following recitals, which sold out. immediately.
He also becomes a regular presence at Versailles where he performs the so-called Queen's Concerts.
Todi, at that time, began to receive invitations that she couldn't refuse from everywhere and the manager of the Spiritual Concerts, in order to arrest her, created a phenomenon of fun, which later came to be used in the future to promote the popularity of other singers:
Invites the great German singer Gertrude Elisabeth Mara to his Spiritual Concerts
Simultaneously, with that invitation, the rumor circulates that there is a huge rivalry between the two and makes them perform alternately in their concerts.
The public rushes in an avalanche, critics only know how to say that both are magnificent and two parties are even formed, Os Todistas and Os Maritistas.
The subject becomes the main topic of debate in the halls of the French capital. In the end, Luísa Todi ends up being considered by the French as “The Singer of the Nation”.
However, Paris and Italy, where she also performed regularly, were no longer enough for Luísa Todi who, being an admirer of the Empress Catherine II of Russia, leaves for that country, even without having a contract, with the word of the director of the Russian Theaters being enough, that he could do two shows for the Empress.
It is said that the farewell show in Paris was an event never seen and no longer repeated. There was a collective madness in acquiring tickets, which reached astronomical prices and at the end of her presentation, with the flowers and gifts received (including countless jewels), Luísa Todi completely filled two rooms.
His stay in St. Petersburg was also a success (the two performances originally planned turned into a four-year stay), but it was a somewhat troubled success! Soon after the first show, Catherine II was so impressed that she appointed Todi the singing teacher of the imperial princesses, creating the enmity of the musical adviser of the Russian court, the Italian composer Giuseppi Sarti.
To try to demoralize Todi with the Empress, Sarti had the idea of calling Russia the most famous castrati of the time, called Marchesi, who was considered the successor of the great Farinelli.
The idea was to place the two side by side, so that the famous Il Marchesino, as the singer was called, would shadow Luísa Todi in an opera by Sarti himself.
However, what Sarti achieved was an extraordinary performance and both Catarina and the entire Court ended up being dazzled by the two singers and even by the composer himself.
From then on Sarti left Luísa in peace, however her problems continued!
Despite earning fortunes in Russia, Luísa's husband lost all his money gambling and Luísa had no choice but to ask Catarina for more and more money.
Naturally, Catherine II ended up putting an end to the situation and Luísa Todi and her husband left for Germany and France.
In Bonn, she is honored with a performance by the young pianist Ludwig van Beethoven and after a season in Paris and new performances in Germany, she settles in Venice, with a contract at the Teatro San Samuele.
In her first performance, she began to leave the audience awestruck when she appeared on stage with the jewels, necklace and tiara that had been offered to her by Catherine of Russia, but all those present were even more surprised, as soon as she began to sing, pretending to immediately made the public and the critics completely surrender to his voice, in such a way that the Italian lyrical season of 1790-1791 became known as "the Year of Todi".
During that stay in Venice, the health of her eyes seriously deteriorated, and she was forced to interrupt her performances, much to the consternation of the public.
Hundreds of poems were written in her honor, effigies of the singer were engraved, and there were popular reactions that bordered on collective hysteria.
On his return to the theater, it is the admirers themselves who decorate and light it, and when he enters the stage, the entire audience is on its feet, moved, in applause that seems to go on forever.
So many people wanted to listen to Luísa for this recital that the Theater had to keep its doors open so that she could be heard in the square in front and in the side streets, where she was heard in religious silence.
She also performs in other Italian cities and in Madrid, until she returns to Porto where she performs until she is 50, when her husband dies and she stops singing, starting to wear full mourning forever.
Six years later, during the Napoleonic invasions, Luísa and her daughters, following the rest of the population of Porto, flee and, at the same time as the Ponte das Barcas disaster occurs, Luísa falls into the river, from the boat where she was, taking with her her a bag with all her money and most of her jewelry.
Her maid hands her an oar from the boat, Luísa is saved, but loses all the possessions she was carrying in the Douro. There are some jewels left in the possession of a daughter, meanwhile shot by invading soldiers.
This wound did not allow them to continue their flight and Luísa, the daughters and the maid decide to surrender to the French. But it is General Soult himself who, upon seeing her, recognizes her as the “Singer of the Nation” and takes her under his own personal protection.
Shortly afterwards, Luísa leaves for Lisbon, where she will live for the rest of her days.
The few jewels she had left enabled her to settle in a modest house in Bairro Alto and eat.
Forgotten by the Portuguese public, from time to time she has visits from her foreign friends, who like to see her again. Little by little, these too will disappear.
At the age of 60, he lost sight in one of his eyes and, 9 years later, he will be completely blind.
And that's how, alone, poor and in darkness, this woman who had already lived with the most important personalities in the world, ends her days. She was almost 81 years old when she died in Lisbon, being buried in the cemetery then adjacent to the Igreja da Encarnação in Chiado.
It is said that she was buried without identification, but it seems that is not the case:I now transcribe what was said, in this regard, by the artist's biographer, Mário Moreau:
“The area of the church where Luísa Todi was buried later ceased to be part of the temple and came to be occupied by a cloakroom that had the number 78 of Rua do Alecrim. Several authors have written that the singer was buried without any indication of the location. There are, however, reasons to assume that this does not correspond to the truth. In fact, the República newspaper published an article in which a statement by the then owner of the said headgear was mentioned. by Luisa Todi. The inscription was a little missing, but not so much that the singer's name could not be clearly seen. At the time, the idea of recovering the tombstone and giving the great artist a dignified burial was still being sketched. But, as would be expected, nothing was done in this regard. For our part, we understand that the ends in view continue to largely justify the necessary research, however unlikely that anyone can consider the success of the enterprise and whatever they may be any objections that may be raised. In any country that duly valued its greatest figures, such a task would have been accomplished long ago. In our land, however, not much more has been achieved so far than an ironic smile and a shrug of the shoulders. Municipality of Lisbon interested in recovering Luísa Todi’s tombstone and giving our great artist the burial she deserves?”