The Sweet-Sounding Voice of Madama Europa
The Little Known Story of the First Jewish Opera Singer
She was one of the first Jewish women to sing in public and almost certainly the first female, Jewish opera singer. Yet very little is known about Europa di Rossi, or Madama Europa, as she is usually termed. When she is mentioned in the history books it is generally as an aside, or in a discussion of her more famous brother, the musician and composer Salamone Rossi. But Madama Europa deserves a mention of her own.
Madama Europa’s name appears in the list of singers who received a salary at the court of the Duke of Mantua in the 1590s. Mantua was a small, independent Duchy, squeezed between the dukedom of Milan and the powerful Venetian Republic, with a ducal Court that was renowned as a major centre of art and culture. Madama Europa worked with the composer Claudio Monteverdi, she sang in the premiere of his opera, Arianna, and performed his arias for the rest of her career. While she was at the Court she would have met astronomers and poets, she may well have bumped into the artist Peter Paul Rubens and perhaps even have encountered Galileo, when he tried to negotiate a position for himself in the Duke’s employ, in 1603.
It could not have been easy for her. Jews in Mantua, as in most Italian cities, lived difficult lives. The ghetto in Mantua wasn’t built until 1612 but even in the 1590s, when Europa was singing for the Duke, Jews were prohibited from most occupations, apart from small scale moneylending and second hand trading. They were obliged to live in their own areas and to wear distinctive clothing, marking them out as Jews.
Europa and Salamone Rossi would have had to wear the yellow badges or hats obligatory upon all Jews, they were only exempted from the employment restrictions because of their extraordinary musical talent. This was due to a cardinal, though unspoken, principle of Italian society in those days; that the restrictions placed on Jews could be lifted for certain people if it suited the nobility. That’s also why Jews were frequently allowed to practise as doctors. Strictly speaking they were forbidden from practising medicine, but the Italian ruling classes saw no point in compromising their own health just for the sake of oppressing the Jews.
It was hard enough for Europa at the Mantuan court because she was Jewish, and it was even harder because the Duke, Vincenzo Gonzaga, was a thoroughly nasty piece of work. The Gonzaga family had ruled Mantua since 1433; their name might be familiar to us because of the play-within-a-play performed in Act 3 of Hamlet. Known as the Murder of Gonzago, it depicts the assassination of a king of the same name. There is no record of a 16th century Gonzaga or Gonzago who was murdered, but there was a Gonzaga who committed a murder, as Shakespeare undoubtedly knew.
The murder took place in 1582. The murderer was the Mantuan Duke, Vincenzo Gonzaga. He killed James Crichton, a young Scottish genius known as the Admirable Crichton because of his powerful intellect. Gonzaga, jealous both of Crichton’s intelligence and his love for a young woman, ambushed him as he left his lover’s home. Crichton fought back and all the ambushers fled, with the exception of one. It was Vincenzo. Realising who he was, Crichton knelt before him in obeisance whereupon Vincenzo stabbed him through the heart. Vincenzo Gonzaga’s court brimmed with the cream of Renaissance artistic talent but those who worked there were acutely aware that they served a monster.
Europa was not the only woman to sing at the Court, the palace had a concerto delle donne, a women’s ensemble. But Europa was special; had she been just an ordinary singer she could never, as a Jew, have had such a glittering career. Clearly a star in the Mantuan Court, she was described as ‘understanding music to perfection, she sang to the listeners’ great delight and their greater wonder, in the most delicate and sweet-sounding voice . . . delightfully modulating her mournful tones that caused the listeners to shed tears of compassion.’
She stood out in the Court because of her voice, and along with her brother Salamone, they stood out even more, as Jews in the Duke’s employ. Their background probably helped them to fit in more easily than most; the di Rossis were a distinguished Jewish family who traced their lineage in Italy back to the year 70 CE. That was when the future Roman Emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem, shipping many of its inhabitants back to Rome as slaves. In due course the enslaved di Rossis bought their freedom and, together with three other families who also claimed to have arrived in in Rome at the same time, they considered themselves as a Jewish-Italian quasi-aristocracy. They were no richer than anyone else but their names were more ancient and, even if nobody else paid much attention to the fact, their sense of exceptionalism was passed down through the generations.
In the 1570s, around the time that Europa was born, a relative, Azariah di Rossi, caused an outcry in the rabbinic community by publishing a scholarly book challenging some of the beliefs of traditional Judaism. He used the new tools of scientific and literary criticism to reach his conclusions. He was the first Jewish scholar to do so and it made him a pioneer in the evolution of modern Jewish thought. The outcry the book caused added to its fame and popularity; if Azariah di Rossi had not come from a famous family, his opponents may well have succeeded in their attempts to ban it.
Europa di Rossi was a pioneer in the same family tradition as her relative Azariah. None of her words or thoughts have come down to us, but simply by doing what she did, by being acclaimed as a singer in the Mantuan Court she helped to raise the profile of Jewish women musicians. In the 1560s, before Madama Europa’s time, a Jewish woman named Madonna Bellina had been commended in Venice for her voice and musical ability, but all that is known about her comes from one single letter. She never became a pathfinder as did Europa di Rossi.
One of the women Europa may have emboldened is known only as Rachel. She lived in the Venice ghetto. In 1613 she was given permission by the Venetian authorities to leave the ghetto at night to sing in the homes of the nobility. Shortly afterwards a complaint was made that she, her father and brother were all taking advantage of the permission granted to her. They were going into the houses of ordinary Venetians, eating, drinking and behaving disreputably. As a result, the authorities withdrew her privileges. Rachel paid no attention. A few years later she was in trouble once again, this time for going around the canals at night singing in a gondola.
Europa di Rossi seems to have only been a salaried singer at the Court for a few years, from around 1589 to 1592. She carried on singing in Mantua after she left the court and was called back in 1608, to perform in a musical drama at the marriage of Vincenzo’s son, Francesco Gonzaga, to Margherita of Savoy.
20 years after this performance, the ghetto in Mantua was overrun by an invading army. The Jewish musicians of the town fled en masse to Venice where Salomone Rossi organised them into a musical circle, under the direction of the famed Venetian Rabbi, Leon Modena. It is impossible to know whether Europa was among them. She may have fled instead to Savoy where her sons Giuseppe and Bonaiuto were both musicians. Or perhaps she was no longer alive.
Meanwhile, in Venice, her brother Salamone Rossi was finishing off his most famous work. It was the brainchild of Leon Modena; a choral liturgical symphony to be performed in the synagogue with the aim of raising the standard of synagogue singing.
Known as Songs of Solomon it was first performed in the Spanish Synagogue in Venice on the night of Simhat Torah, in front of an audience of Jews and Christians who had come into the ghetto especially for the occasion. Leon Modena had permitted musical instruments to be played in the synagogue despite the general prohibition, he may too have circumvented tradition and allowed women to sing. If he did, and if so, whether Madama Europa was among the singers that evening, is a question nobody has yet been able to answer.