Anna (or Ann) Selina Storace (Italian: [stoˈraːtʃe];27 October 1765 – 24 August 1817), known professionally as Nancy Storace, was an English operatic soprano. The role of Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) was written for and first performed by her.
Born in London, she began her singing career as a child prodigy in England by the age of 12. This led to further study in Italy and to a successful singing career there during the late 1770s. While in Monza (or shortly before in Milan) in 1782, she was recruited to form part of Emperor Joseph II's new Italian opera company in Vienna, where the assembled singers who joined her "created in the two years leading up to the premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, were welded into the finest buffa ensemble anywhere."
In Vienna, she befriended both Mozart and Joseph Haydn. A sudden failure of her voice in 1785 caused her to withdraw from the stage for five months; though her career continued to be successful, she never fully recovered her former vocal prowess. After marrying in 1784, she left Vienna in 1787 and returned to London, where she continued her career, notably singing in her brother Stephen Storace's operas. She remained in London, but by 1808 had retired from the stage. She died in 1817.
Nancy Storace's mother was Elizabeth Trusler, the daughter of a pastry cook and the proprietor of Marylebone Gardens. Her father was Stefano Storace, an Italian who had emigrated to Ireland in 1750 and worked there as a double bass player until 1756. By 1759 he was performing in London; a reviewer called him "the first performer of his time on the double-bass". Storace also translated opera libretti from Italian into English, and arranged music for performance. Their older child Stephen Storace, who also achieved fame as a musician, was born in 1762.
Nancy Storace was born 1765 in London. She was a child prodigy: she first performed in public in Southampton in 1773; in April 1774 she made her first London appearance at the Haymarket Theatre. She studied voice with the celebrated castrato Venanzio Rauzzini and premiered the role of Cupido in Rauzzini's opera L'ali d'amore on 29 February 1776.
In 1778, Storace travelled to Naples in the company of her parents; her older brother Stephen was already there studying composition. She studied in Venice under Antonio Sacchini. The visit to Italy became an extended one as Storace embarked on a very successful career there, singing at first minor roles, then major ones. The composer Giuseppe Sarti wrote his opera Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode (1782, Milan) specifically for her; it achieved great success. Shortly afterwards, Storace was recruited for Vienna along with the outstanding basso buffo Francesco Benucci. Storace as the prima donna and Benucci, who was also singing with her, were offered high salaries, over 4000 florins.
While in Italy, Storace met the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, who was for a long time her colleague as well as a friend. Kelly mentions her frequently in his memoirs.
The skill and self-confidence of the young soprano is illustrated by an oft-repeated anecdote told by Kelly:
She was very well liked, and afterward went to Florence, where the celebrated soprano singer, Marchesi, [a castrato] was engaged at the Pergola theatre. He was then in his prime, and attracted not only all Florence, but I may say all Tuscany. Storace was engaged to sing second woman in his operas; and to the following circumstance, well known all over the Continent, did she owe her sudden elevation in her profession. Bianchi had composed the celebrated cavatina 'Semianza amabile del mio bel sole', which Marchesi sung with the most ravishing taste; in one passage he ran up a voletta of semitone octaves, the last of which he gave with such exquisite power and strength, that it was ever after called 'La Bomba di Marchesi!' Immediately after this song, Storace had to sing one, and was determined to bring a bomba into the field also. She attempted it, and executed it, to the admiration and astonishment of the audience, but to the dismay of poor Marchesi. Campigli, the manager, requested her to discontinue it, but she peremptorily refused, saying that she had as good a right to shew the power of her bomba as any body else. The contention was brought to a close by Marchesi's declaring that if she did not leave the company, he would; and unjust as it was, the manager was obliged to dismiss her, and engage another lady, who was not so ambitious of exhibiting a bomba.
Goldovsky suggests that in such exploits Storace was "planting the seeds" of later vocal trouble:
As any singing teacher will tell you, a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl sustaining extremely high tones "with exquisite power and strength" is likely, sooner or later, to injure her vocal cords.
In 1783 the Austrian Emperor Joseph II founded a new opera company specialising in Italian opera buffa. At the time Storace was singing at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice. Count Giacomo Durazzo, who was both an experienced former theatre director and the Emperor's ambassador, engaged Michael Kelly, as he states in his Reminiscences. With further recruitment like the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte an outstanding ensemble was formed.
According to Dorothea Link, Storace performed in about 20 operas during her stay in Vienna. She sang in several world premieres in 1780s, including Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (with Francesco Benucci in the title role), the Countess in Salieri's La scuola de' gelosi (also with Benucci) and Angelica in Vicente Martín y Soler's Il burbero di buon cuore.
Storace seems often to have made a powerful impression on audience members. Hunter describes and quotes the diary of Count Karl von Zinzendorf, a government official who regularly attended the theater in Storace's time.
[His] 1783 comments about Nancy Storace as Dorina in Fra i due litiganti seem astonishingly unguarded: "Storace played [the role] like an angel. Her beautiful eyes, her white neck, her beautiful throat, her fresh mouth, made a charming effect." His 1787 comments on the duet, "Pace, caro mio sposo," in Una cosa rara suggest comparable enthusiasm for the music Storace sang: "I find the duo between Mandini and Storace so tender and so expressive that it poses a danger to the young members of the audience. One needs to have had some experience in order to see it with a cool head".
After Storace left Vienna in 1787, Zinzendorf's diary entries repeatedly express regret that later sopranos could not live up to her performances.
The Hungarian poet Ferenc Kazinczy attended a performance of The Marriage of Figaro and later remembered the powerful impression the work made on him, mentioning Storace in particular:
Storace, the beautiful singer, enchanted eye, ear, and soul. – Mozart directed the orchestra, playing his fortepiano; the joy which this music causes is so far removed from all sensuality that one cannot speak of it. Where could words be found that are worthy to describe such joy?